COOPER CITY, Fla. – A Cooper City resident told Local 10 News that someone she knows broke into her car more than a month ago and she claims the Broward Sheriff’s Office has been dragging its feet.
Sheri Santiago said she even knows who the burglar is, yet that person still hasn’t been arrested.
“Over a month and I haven’t heard anything and, you know, the longer it’s going, it seems it’s just slipping away,” she said.
Santiago is a small business owner in Cooper City.
She doesn’t have many employees, and although her salon is successful, every penny matters.
So you can imagine how devastated she was last month when she had thousands of dollars stolen.
“We took a big loss. We took a big loss. You know, it hurt. I’m not going to lie,” she said.
Santiago said she was planning on taking cash from the shop to the bank -- just feet away from her store -- in early January.
She put the money into a bag, put the bag in her purse and her purse in the car.
But before she made it to the bank, she got called back into the store and ended up staying in there for about an hour.
“When we closed, I went out to my car to check it and my whole purse was missing,” Santiago said.
Santiago said she had forgotten to lock her car.
From her surveillance cameras, you can see the thief getting out of a red Jeep, getting into the passenger side of her car, staying in there for a few seconds and then getting back into the Jeep and driving away.
Santiago said the thief is one of her employees.
“It was her car and her girlfriend was driving the car,” she said.
In fact, when you see Santiago run back into the salon to check her cameras, the Jeep pulls up and eventually a woman, who Santiago said is her now former employee, jumps inside.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office is now looking into the case and Santiago hopes they’ll bring the crooks in.
She said she also had Social Security cards for herself and her child in the purse, and the crooks have tried creating an account in her name. But all of Santiago’s accounts have been frozen.
Anyone with further information about the case is asked to call Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477.