The front door of Marshall Street restaurant Pita El Saha was smashed in and $2,500 was taken from the store in a burglary Thursday morning.

Syracuse police responded to a call Thursday around 7:15 a.m. from Cosmos Pizza and Grill’s general manager, Vivian Alexander, who said the front glass of Pita El Saha, located at 137 Marshall St., had been shattered, according to the police report. Police had no suspects at the time the police report was filed.

Alexander also called Bechara Karam, the owner of Pita El Saha, to tell him his business had been broken into, Karam said.

Karam said the burglary is both a major impact on the business and very frustrating.

‘It’s everything,’ he said.

Karam has owned Pita El Saha, which specializes in Mediterranean cuisine, for eight years. This is the first time the restaurant has been burglarized, he said.

Although police do not have any suspects yet, Alexander told police she observed a gray sedan pull up in front of her business, which is next door to Pita El Saha. She said she first thought they might be patrons on Marshall Street. But she then saw a man enter the passenger side of the car with something ‘big and black,’ according to the report.

Alexander described the man to police as average size, wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt and jeans, according to the report.

Once Karam appeared on the scene, he inventoried the store and found $500 was missing from the register. Upon checking the basement, police noted the wooden door to the basement office had been kicked in, and Karam told police $2,000 was missing from his desk, according to the police report.

Although the restaurant has security cameras installed, they were not working at the time of the break-in, according to the police report. Police also checked for security cameras at other businesses and those operated by Syracuse University’s Department of Public Safety that might have caught an image of the car or license plate, but none cover that area of Marshall Street, according to the police report.

Karam told police he had fired an employee days before the incident because the former employee had not shown up to work, but Karam told police he had no reason to believe that person would burglarize the store, according to the report.

The costs of the damages to the building are being evaluated, and the total estimated cost of repair has yet to be determined, Karam said.

rastrum@syr.edu

Published on October 17, 2010 at 12:00 pm