Fifty bottles of high end liquor were removed from a car police believe belongs to one of three women who stole it from area Safeway stores, Port Orchard Police Cmdr. Geoffrey Marti told me this morning.
The bottles were mostly in the $50 price range, Marti said. A detective obtained a search warrant and served it on the car, found by police at the Port Orchard Safeway, Thursday afternoon.
Long story short, the three women, who have yet to be charged with a crime, are accused of stealing the liquor from Safeway stores all across the county, from Bainbridge Island to Port Orchard. They were arrested in Port Orchard but released Tuesday as the investigation developed.
Here’s the recap, if you haven’t read it yet:
Police say the trio, two Seattle women age 23 and 21 and a 21-year-old Kent woman, have been caught on camera and by store security loading shoulder bags and shopping carts full of liquor and then attempting to leave the stores. Up until early Monday, they’d avoided apprehension.
But early Monday — after the women were alleged to have made off with more than $600 worth of mostly Crown Royal from the Bainbridge Island Safeway on High School Road — the suspects showed up at the Bethel Road Safeway in Port Orchard, 36 miles away.
There, an officer, notified by Bethel Road store’s employees and Bainbridge officers, confronted the three. In interviews with Port Orchard officers, two denied the thefts and a third declined to talk to police. Police located a vehicle in the parking lot that had numerous bottles of liquor, including Crown Royal with security devices attached to them.
In total, the three are alleged to have attempted to take or make off with liquor in the past week at Safeways in Bainbridge, Port Orchard, East Bremerton and West Bremerton. Police say they might have stolen from some stores more than once.
The case is now being coordinated by a Kitsap County Sheriff’s detective, Marti added. We’ll keep you posted.
Blogger’s note: the photo on this post comes from the Bremerton Safeway’s attempted liquor theft by the same suspects Sept. 3.
