Keep your friends close, and your enemies… on Facebook.
That’s what a Manitoba store owner did after a young man broke in and stole several watches from a glass cabinet on Friday morning.
Stefan Tergesen, the owner of H.P Tergesen and Sons in Gimli, Manitoba, reviewed his CCTV footage of the break-in and decided that he would harness the power of social media to try to catch the thief himself.
Within 12 hours of uploading the footage onto the store’s Facebook and Instagram page, Tergesen had the name of the culprit. But instead of going straight to the police, he decided to indulge in a little vigilantism himself.
The store owner sent the suspect a friend request on Facebook and very shortly afterwards received a confession from the guilty party. The message from the culprit read, “I turned myself in,” and he went on to say that, “I couldn’t live with what I did and I’ll be returning everything. I’m willing to face the consequences and I couldn’t be more sorry for what I did.”
Tergesen, whose store has been owned by the same family for 117 years, assured the boy that he was doing the right thing and that he would be contacting the RCMP.
He said to CTV News that he wished he had seen the boy’s face when he had received the friend request. But it’s probably for the best that he didn’t – this story demonstrates just how easy it is to find someone or be found, whether you want to or not. But sleuthing, even when it is successful, can still be dangerous, warned the RCMP, as criminals’ behaviour could be violent or unpredictable.
[ad_bb1]
