The boarded-up business yesterday. Picture: BEN EYLES
“LUCKY they didn’t burn anything this time,” Stacey Hill said.
It’s a perspective not too many would share if thieves had smashed in your front door and stolen an $11,000 dirt bike.
But when there have been three earlier break-ins at your shop, it’s the only attitude you can afford.
Wodonga KTM motorcycles in High Street suffered its fourth break-in in two years early yesterday and the family that owns the business was delighted that nothing was set on fire this time.
“It was pretty clean this time,” Miss Hill, 23, said.
Wodonga police Detective Sen-Constable Brendan Roche said the thieves had smashed their way in at 4.30am through the front glass door.
They stole a 2012 KTM SFX 350 valued at $11,000 from the showroom.
The dirt bike had a locked rear wheel. A skid mark ran from inside the shop out into the driveway.
Sen-Constable Roche said it appeared the bike had been taken away in a vehicle.
He said a witness had heard a car speed off not long after the store’s alarm went off.
The Hill family — John and Leanne and their daughter Stacey and son Justin — were again woken yesterday by a security company call.
Miss Hill said the latest break-in was disappointing.
“It’s happened so many times now,” she said.
“It’s hard because we’ve just sorted out that window after last time,” she said.
Thieves smashed a car through the front window in October, removed a dirt bike then reversed the car out of the shop and set it alight. They pushed the bike away and started it elsewhere.
That followed a break-in in July 2011, when a car was used as a battering ram to break into the back of the shop and steal another dirt bike.
A Wodonga teenager was charged over the October raid.
Sen-Constable Roche did not believe the latest break-in was related.
“The modus operandi was different this time,” he said.
The Hills have run the store for 10 years since moving from Myrtleford.
In that time, cost of insurance on the business has soared to something between 300 and 400 per cent.
Miss Hill said the family would persist with the business, despite the set-back.
“You can’t let something like this put you off,” she said.
“It’s a family business and we just stick together.
“You’ve just go to push through it.”
Sen-Constable Roche urged anyone who had any information to phone Wodonga police on (02) 6049 2600 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.