Authorities in Miami are puzzled following a bizarre theft that occurred at a religious store on Friday night.
Mae and Nelson Hernandez, owners of El Viejo Lazaro Botanica in Miami, report that a man broke into their business after hours with a bucket on his head and wearing black garbage bag for a cape. He then proceeded to steal a cage full of pigeons that they say are worth “thousands of dollars.”
“I don’t know what’s going here in Miami,” Mae Hernandez told WSVN. “People don’t have respect for anything.”
This marks the second time the Hernandezes store has been robbed in the past year. They say, however, that this burglary is especially painful as it happens right at the holidays.
The robbery occurred just after closing time on Friday night. Surveillance video shows the bucket-adorned man jumping a barbed wire fence before quickly emerging from the store with the pigeons. The thief didn’t get away completely scott free, however and he is next seen scaling a ladder and then tumbling over the fence and falling onto the ground. Police assume that he was injured in the fall.
“People are crazy. People know I have security cameras,” said Nelson Hernandez. “People know I put the wires. More security, and these people don’t care.”
Hernandez also notes that the robber was especially rough with the birds.
“Because now, these little pigeons, he breaks the eggs and everything. It’s animal abuse,” said Nelson. “The way he took the pigeons was very rough.”
You can view the surveillance video courtesy of WSVN below: