Having a nice strong safe with sturdy locks is not much help if someone can just wheel the whole thing out the door of your apartment. Such a brazen act of criminality was performed, and captured on video, in a building in Elmhurst, Queens, recently.
A surveillance video released by the police Wednesday shows a man entering an elevator at 78-36 46th Avenue on the afternoon of May 3 carrying nothing but a walking cane, and re-entering it more than two and a half hours later, wheeling an office chair atop which sits a large squarish object covered in a white cloth.
The police say that the object beneath the cloth was a safe containing an undetermined amount of cash and jewelry. In an apparent effort at inconspicuousness, the man is wearing a beige kerchief knotted atop his head when he leaves; when he enters, he is bareheaded.
The video, a cinematic 42-second mini-epic that captures the man from at least half a dozen cameras, then shows him wheeling his haul past the potted plants and mirrored walls of the building’s lobby and out into the street, where he appears to draw a double-take from a passing toddler but no other attention.
The police say the man appears to be about 5 foot 10 and 220 pounds and in his 40s. If you think you’ve seen him or the safe, please contact the Police Department’s Crime Stoppers unit by phone (1-800-577-8477), Web site or text (send “TIPS 577,” followed by the message, to 274637).