Autoheat, an air conditioning equipment supplier based in Lagoa, was the victim of an organised burglary recently, losing its safe and a whole host of brand new air conditioning equipment delivered earlier in the week.
Owners Maureen and Richard Hemming received a phone call from Armação de Pêra GNR early on Saturday morning, telling them the store had been burgled. The whole of the front of the shop was smashed in and the alarm system disabled. In total, 10 new air conditioning units were taken. These are heavy but moveable items, but, more unusually, the thieves also removed the heavy safe from the store. In order for the burglars to take the safe, they had to go into one of the offices within the store and lift it out from a secured cupboard. “The safe originally took four men to install it,” says Richard Hemming. “So this was not a small job – there must have been quite a few people in on the plot.” After the robbery was discovered, GNR officers fingerprinted the entire shop and are currently searching their archive for matches.
The thieves also left behind a small blood sample. However, without access to the correct DNA scanning database, the Hemmings are certain this will be of no use. Despite the setback, Autoheat owners say that it is business as usual and are now in the process of rebuilding the front of the store and investing in a new burglar alarm.
