A thief who was caught on cam­era steal­ing over $1,300 worth of gro­ceries from a min­i­mart in Mara­bel­la, is now on the run from po­lice. The man was seen en­ter­ing the Har­mo­ny Hall Mi­ni-Mart on Union Road, Mara­bel­la, short­ly af­ter 7 am wear­ing a cap, blue jeans and a striped T-shirt. He was seen walk­ing to the back of the store and stuff­ing bot­tles of de­odor­ant down his pants.

The cam­eras record­ed the man ca­su­al­ly pick­ing up pack­ets of rice, tins of corned beef, garbage bags, pep­per sauce, pow­dered juice, tooth paste and bread. The items were then placed on top of a fridge. Next, the thief pulled out cheese, sausages and but­ter from in­side the fridge.

He stashed all the items in a black duf­fle bag, walked out of the store and then came back in for more. The cashier Di­ane Moone­sar was busy at­tend­ing to oth­er cus­tomers at the time and did not ob­serve the thief. Min­i­mart em­ploy­ee Andy Ba­choo said a few min­utes lat­er he no­ticed that sev­er­al items on the shelf were mixed up.

"That was when we went back to the cam­eras and saw him steal­ing," Ba­choo said. The cam­era showed the thief strut­ting out of the store with the bag. He said the thief hid a duf­fle bag out­side and went back and forth car­ry­ing away gro­cery items. An­oth­er work­er, Ron­nie Poonith, said sev­er­al months ago, a man fit­ting the same de­scrip­tion was seen steal­ing a loaf of bread from out­side the Unipet Ser­vice Sta­tion.

PCs Collin Phillip and Daniel Sadanan vis­it­ed the min­i­mart yes­ter­day and took pho­tos of the sus­pect from the cam­era. Any­one with in­for­ma­tion can con­tact Crime Stop­pers at 800-TIPS or the Mara­bel­la po­lice sta­tion at 652-6777.