At 3:45 AM on September 18 a man began throwing a spark plug repeatedly at the glass front door of Cyberia, an Internet cafe in River North. When it didn’t break after 15 minutes, he walked to a side window and tried his luck there. It was good. He shattered the glass, stacked the window’s icicle-shaped shards into a neat pile, and stepped inside. He emptied the cash register and safe and took off with a 38-inch plasma TV under his arm. He left behind a glove and partial prints on a cable that had been connected to the TV. But his biggest mistake may have been his choice of target: hit an Internet cafe and your image just may end up on the Internet, for all the world to see. “You’d think he would know better,” says owner Nick Stellato, who’s posted screen shots of security camera footage on the cafe’s Web site, cyberiacoffee.com, and plans to post video of the crime too. You can also see it on our Web site, chicagoreader.com.
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Stellato says the burglary brought “negativity and trauma” to the cafe. His baristas are now afraid to come to work, believing the burglar will return now that he “knows the lay of the land.” Stellato has armed them with pepper spray and has been waking up at 5 AM to open the cafe with them and returning at midnight to close it himself.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Nick Stellato photo by Robert Drea.
