Thieves broke into the Mobil gas station at 211 Post Road overnight from Sunday to Monday, Aug. 21 to 22, and carried away an automated teller machine with $640 in it.
The theft is one of a number of recent burglaries targeting ATM machines around Fairfield County. They include a burglary in Westport that same weekend and another at the Standard gas station at 180 Noroton Ave. (on the east side of that street’s intersection with West Avenue) sometime in the past weekend.
A police spokesman had less information on that incident, but said that while the building was entered, the ATM remained securely bolted to the floor.
On Monday, Darien Police Capt. Raymond Osborne told the Police Commission that in the break-in on Friday, Aug. 26, thieves “got away with some cigarettes and a cash drawer.” Police believe the two incidents are related and “have some information on that,” he said.
At the Mobil station on the Post Road, a surveillance video showed two suspects enter the building and then remove the ATM machine, which is valued at $2,300 and owned by the business. The machine stood about 18 feet from the front door, which had been pried open. Nothing else was taken by the burglars.
The time stamp on the video shows that the theft took place in about four minutes, apparently shortly after 1 a.m. (Video surveillance time stamps can be somewhat inaccurate, but this one showed the theft occurring from 1:14 a.m. to 1:18 a.m.)
An alarm was activated by the burglary, and police arrived at the scene at about 1:30 a.m. They did not see anything out of place and left. A phone call from the alarm company to the owner was unnoticed and went to voicemail.
At 5 a.m., store employees opened the business and didn’t immediately notice the ATM missing or the damage to the front door (which may have been slight, although pry marks were found later). By 9:30 a.m., the theft was noticed and the owner was called, and at 11:17 a.m., the owner called police to report the incident.
Surveillance video from the gas station also shows a vehicle leaving the parking lot and headed west on the Post Road. Police detectives are continuing their investigation and not releasing any further descriptions of what was seen on the video.