Around fifty boxes of food intended for families in need were stolen during the holiday season from the warehouse of the Grande Guignolée des medias de la Rive-Sud, in Saint-Lambert.
Traces of the theft were discovered in the morning, Thursday, by those responsible for the collection, the fruit of which is distributed each year to around twenty organizations in the five towns constituting the Longueuil agglomeration.
“When we returned, obviously, we noticed that boxes had been broken, torn. They caused damage,” sighs the head of collection for 22 years, Jean-Marie Girard, contacted on Saturday.
The fifty stolen boxes contained a kit of products – non-perishable foods, pharmaceutical products, diapers, new clothes – intended for families in need. The collection made it possible to prepare more than 400 of these boxes, specifies the manager.
The latter suspects the thieves of having entered through a broken window of the warehouse loaned free of charge to the Grande Guignolée of the South Shore media, in Saint-Lambert. “We blocked it as best we could, with the means at hand,” describes Jean-Marie Girard.
The thieves then allegedly easily opened the building’s garage door from the inside to escape.
The second time in four years
Officers from the Longueuil Agglomeration Police Department were called to the scene shortly after the discovery of the misdeed to observe the situation, explains Jean-Marie Girard. However, the place was not equipped with security cameras. “We are lending this premises so we are not about to start imposing our needs to install cameras, etc., to prevent thefts,” indicates the collection manager.
“It’s always disappointing because these are all things for disadvantaged people. Did people who needed it do this? We don’t know,” he wonders.
This is not the first time that the Grande Guignolée of the South Shore media has been the victim of theft while a similar event also occurred in 2020. This time, however, the value of the stolen goods , estimated at around $10,000, is much larger, deplores Jean-Marie Girard.
The news of the ransacking and the theft, however, triggered a large solidarity movement to replenish the organization’s inventory.
Informed of the situation, the mayor of Longueuil, Catherine Fournier, launched a call for donations on Saturday. “I invite those who can, and in particular businesses in our territory, to give generously, in goods or money,” she wrote in a message shared on her social networks while describing the theft “absolutely abject”.