ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – Owners of The Soda Fountain say a burglar made off with about $1,000 after breaking into the College Park ice cream shop early Monday.
“You got to be pretty down bad to rob a family-owned ice cream shop,” co-owner Nina Plewa told News 6 from inside the business Thursday morning.
Plewa and her husband took ownership of the longtime College Park favorite in March.
“We just wanted to bring a little bit of life back into it and have something for our son that’s special, and for the community, for kids,” Plewa said while holding the couple’s 11-month-old son, Rome. The family plans to relaunch the shop under the name Rome’s Corner.
She is accustomed to seeing Rome crawl across the shop’s floor. But on Monday, security video showed someone else crawling through the business after hours.
“We see this guy, like, in a full ski mask in an all black outfit, crawling around the store, opening the cash register, taking everything out, going into the kitchen, opening our drawers,” Plewa said as she described the surveillance footage shared with News 6.
The individual, who appears to be a man, can be seen on several cameras moving through The Soda Fountain in a black ski mask and dark clothing. Although he seemingly tried to avoid notice, his actions were captured from multiple angles.
“It was very violating,” Plewa said. “It’s something that’s never happened to me before, so it was jarring for sure. Creepy.”
Video appears to show the suspect rifling through the cash register before it falls to the floor with a loud crash.
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“All the contents were like flipped on the floor,” Plewa said. “So there were like coins everywhere and just like a bit of a mess.”
Plewa said the person took everything in the cash register, plus deposits in envelopes. The total loss ended up amounting to $1,000.
Then there was the door that the person broke to get inside the shop — the one entrance that doesn’t trigger an alarm.
“The door is like $2,000 to fix,” Plewa said. “So that was worse than the cash.”
As first-time owners of a brick-and-mortar store, Plewa and her husband know that every dollar counts — especially because they’re here on a work visa from Canada and cannot qualify for things like a Small Business Administration loan.
But Plewa, who filed a report with Orlando Police, is keeping things in perspective.
“It was damage to the door but it could have been a lot worse,” Plewa said.
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