Thieves kick in York café door, rip out till and steal cash – and chocolate eggs

Thieves have struck at a York city centre café.

Two or three men kicked in the door of Random Encounter Gaming Café and Bar on Gillygate at around 11.30pm on Saturday (27 April).

They ripped the till set-up off the counter, made up of an iPad mounted in a point-of-sale stand.

They took the till drawer and also the majority of the chocolate from the counter. Co-owner Ellen Hall said the thieves left a trail of Creme Eggs down Gillygate.

She told YorkMix:

• The police think it’s two or three men, but we could only see two on our CCTV footage.

  We could only see them briefly on the CCTV as they pulled the cable out, they had their hoods up and the one that went up to the camera covered his face.

  It happened from about 11:30pm, which seems a strange time as there would have been quite a few people walking by as it was a Saturday night.
  

She said the burglarly had been stressful, and was a blow to a young independent business – but they still managed to improvise a till and open the café today.

Ellen added: “Honestly, this kind of thing has been happening so much down Gillygate lately it almost felt like an inevitability.”

On the plus side, “our customers have been lovely! It does restore your faith in humanity after something like this, when people are so supportive,” she said.

As the burglars were at work for about 20 minutes on a busy Saturday night she hopes someone saw something. If you have any information that could help the police investigation, call 101.

Another recent burglarly saw thieves break in to The Sea Catcher fish and chip on Clarence Street, just across from Gillygate.

They stole around £300 of equipment and a charity jar.