$70,000 in audio, video gear stolen

Hours after hearing of damage to his store, a business owner arrives to find his storeroom emptied.

By KELLEY BENHAM
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 14, 2002

TARPON SPRINGS -- A phone call about a broken window woke Bill Stathopoulos too early Friday morning, but he wasn't worried.

Somebody threw a rock, he figured. If anyone had broken into his store, the alarm would have notified police.

But when he arrived at A&B Audio three hours later, at 8:30 a.m., he found not just a broken window but an emptied store room. Equipment valued at about $70,000 -- one of his biggest inventories since Christmas -- was gone.

His manager, Mike Cox, saw the storeroom first.

"He turned white in the face," Stathopoulos said. "I thought he saw someone passed out or dead in there."

Sometime after Stathopoulos left at 11 p.m. the night before, someone broke a small window in the front of the store and crawled inside, police said.

Phone lines were cut, deactivating the alarm system, said Tarpon Springs Police Sgt. Jeffrey Young.

To get out, burglars unbolted the security bars on a back door and unscrewed the dead bolts, Stathopoulos said. It would have taken a large truck, he said, to haul away so much equipment.

Most of the equipment in the front of the store was not stolen, Stathopoulos said. He hopes he can keep the store open.

The store at 39024 U.S. 19 N near Klosterman Road sells audio and video equipment for cars. Gone are amplifiers, stereo systems, DVD players and navigation systems.

Stathopoulos has owned the business for nine years and has suffered a smash-and-grab or two, he said, but nothing like this.

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