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Police investigate safe break-in at High Falls Gorge

Someone broke into the office at Wilmington’s High Falls Gorge early Sunday morning, “mangled” open a 760-pound steel and concrete safe, and stole cash and papers inside, owner Kathryn Reiss said Wednesday.

State police are investigating and asking people to help them track down the burglar.

They said the crime was committed between the hours of 2 and 4 a.m. Sunday.

“It’s devastating,” Reiss said Wednesday. “My general manager arrived at work at about 8:15 in the morning and discovered the window to our office was open – pried right off, completely dislodged from the building – and our safe was completely mangled.”

High Falls Gorge is located in the Wilmington Notch at 4761 state Route 86, and from its walkways visitors can get an up-close view of waterfalls and rapids on the West Branch of the AuSable River. Reiss took over the tourist attraction in 2001 from her father, who had owned it since 1976.

She shared a dollar figure on the paper money and rolled quarters that were stolen, but the newspaper is withholding that amount at the request of state police Investigator Scott Tart, who said public knowledge of it could interfere with his investigation.

The loss to the business goes beyond cash. Since its office was an active crime scene, High Falls Gorge had to remain closed Sunday, losing out on many summer customers, Reiss said. Plus, she said, the destroyed safe cost $5,900, and then there’s the cost to replace the window.

“It starts to add up to a 10,000 loss,” she said. “It’s pretty heavy for a little business like this. People lost their wages for the day. They couldn’t come in on Sunday.

“And it doesn’t make anyone here feel too safe, either. Every time I walk by that safe, I just shudder.”

A security camera in the office captured video of the burglar, and Reiss hopes police can extract a good image and circulate it to the public to help find the thief. Tart, however, described the video image as “crude.” He sent it to state police information technology staff in Albany, who he said are backlogged and probably won’t be able to get to it for several weeks.

Reiss said the safe now looks like a dog mauled it, if any animal could chew through steel and fireproof concrete walls.

“They used a pry bar to peel the steel part of the door away, which is not easy,” she said. The safe is rated to resist fire for two hours and is “supposed to be burglar-proof.

“It’s not just pried apart. It’s completely mangled, and then inside, the cement wall is shattered, crumbled in pieces.

“With the work he had to do to get into that safe, he must have been very sore,” she added. “He had to have hurt himself somewhere in the line of getting that safe open.”

Tart said no sophisticated burglary tools appear to have been used.

“It definitely took some work to get into, but it was a crude production,” he said.

State police urge anyone with information to call their Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Ray Brook at 518-897-2000.

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