VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - Businesses downtown are boarding and sweeping up after Wednesday's riot.
Many are tallying their losses now, trying to asses how much damage was caused and how much merchandise was stolen.
London Drugs on the corner of Granville and Georgia was a big target for thieves and rioters.
Company President Wynne Powell says at first it seemed things might be okay. "[The] perimeter of our store withstood attacks for two hours, which is incredible," says President Wynne Powell.
He says the store staff was trapped inside until Vancouver Police got them out and a huge amount of merchandise was stolen once thieves busted in.
"We estimate between $300,000 to $500,000 of stock has been taken, and we estimate the damage to the store is of an equal magnitude. So we're ball parking the money issue now around $1 million for us alone," he adds.
He says thieves made off with a lot of electronics. "We
manufacture high-end computers called Certified Data.
Those were the ones that were stolen from the
store.
So it appears to me that somebody
had [made] a shopping list beforehand, so I'm not convinced that this was just
a passion-of-the-moment time thing."
But, Powell says people have come by to express sympathy for the damage.
He also has a warning for the looters. "I would encourage those thieves who did steal from us: We've got over 200 sharp, well-defined pictures of you. You will be found. You may want to turn yourself into the police to make the sentence easier on yourself because these kind of individuals need to be processed by our court system."