Mounties in Nanaimo, British Columbia, say two late-night revelers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics were not reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business .
“It’s another act of drunkenness,” said Const. Gary O’Brien of the Nanaimo RCMP told CTV News the detachment was made aware of the video, which has racked up hundreds of thousands of views online.
“There is no excuse for being drunk,” the police spokesman added. “If it had been reported, these guys would be facing charges of theft and vandalism.”
Leon Drzewiecki, owner of NYLA men’s clothing store Fresh Thread, says he didn’t report the theft because the sign was returned, and he’s glad no one was seriously hurt.
“I didn’t inform the RCMP,” he told CTV News. “They’re busy with a lot of other things going on right now and I don’t want to bother them with something so minor.”
The video, captured by the store’s surveillance cameras earlier this month, shows a man carrying another man on his shoulders outside the store shortly after 2 a.m. The elevated man works to unfasten the elevated store sign before the weight brings him directly to the ground.
‘Instant karma’
“It was instant karma,” Drzewiecki says. “As soon as that thing let go, it fell straight to the ground on its face.”
Store staff did not realize the sign was missing until Nanaimo Port Authority staff found it and returned it later that day.
“I definitely went straight to the security footage” upon learning that the sign had been taken, Drzewiecki says. “And I saw that the guys from 2 were helping me uninstall my sign after 10 years.”
In fact, the store owner first hung the sign over the front of his store when he opened the store on March 8, 2014. That wasn’t an easy task either, he says.
The sign was made by a friend in the metal fabrication business and is made up of a stainless steel core with two steel sheets and two aluminum sheets on the sides, according to Drzewiecki. “It weighs about 100 pounds,” he says.
The video posted online does not show the entire 15-minute sign-stealing saga, according to the owner, who says the video has since been viewed about half a million times.
“The first five or ten minutes they took down half the sign and then they gave up and walked away,” he says. “And then about seven minutes later, they walked up to the sign and then climbed back on each other’s shoulders and continued the process. And then, you know, instant karma, the guy fell to the ground face first and I’m so happy that he didn’t do it.” He hurt himself, to be honest.”
The two men then struggled to lift the sign off the ground. “Then they both pick it up and carry it away because it’s so heavy,” says Drzewiecki. “And they only went one block away before getting rid of the sign in the park along the boardwalk.”
Men were seen in local bars.
Drzewiecki says it’s hard enough being a small business owner in downtown Nanaimo without such petty acts of vandalism. The father of three says he occasionally puts his own personal savings into the 10-year-old business to make payroll and keep it open.
“It’s not good that these guys did that,” says the NYLA owner. “I don’t think it was anything malicious or thought out, they just did it on a whim after a long night.”
On the plus side, Drzewiecki says neighboring businesses have evidence that the two men were helping keep other establishments afloat that same night.
“I’ve talked to some of the bar owners,” he says. “I’ve seen videos of some of the bars and they were definitely getting in on the action at a couple of the downtown Nanaimo bars here.”
The owner of NYLA made headlines early last year when he began playing the catchy children’s song “Baby Shark” over and over on speakers outside his business to deter after-hours loafers.
“It’s a cheap and fun way to deter people without being aggressive to anyone else,” Drzewiecki told CTV News in January 2023. “But you don’t want to hear it over and over again.”
With files from Andrew Garland of Vancouver Island’s CTV News