When thieves broke into the Revolution Kia dealership earlier this month, stealing two vehicles and damaging the store, Revolution Auto Group CEO Lionel Robins took to social media. He shared a video of the break and enter, and offered a new snowmobile as a rewards for tips that led to an arrest. A man has since been arrested for that crime and others, and Robins believes his public plea helped.
“The people that they’ve arrested were already persons of interest for other crime, so I think when multiple tips came in with the same names on it, it certainly nudged [police] into believing for sure that they were legitimate leads as they already knew these people were capable of that.”
32 year old Jessie Hanaghan is now in police custody. He was arrested with Joshua Anderson and Kevin Gamble after a couple of break ins Friday. Robins believes they’re likely involved with other crimes in Grande Prairie, and hopes by going public with his break in, others will follow.
“Most of the response has been, ‘we all need to start caring more about our community, we all need to keep our eyes open, we all need to pay more attention, we should be in charge partially of keeping our own community safe,’ so it kind of had a more far reaching approach than just trying to find those responsible for one single event.”
Lux Kitchen Bath Lighting has also been the victim of recent thefts, and they’ve teamed up with Revolution to create what they’re calling the “Turn on the Lights Grande Prairie” initiative, encouraging other business owners to take steps to prevent crime.