It’s Sunday afternoon and you get a call from the police telling you that your store has been broken into. Of course, you race to the store expecting the worst. It’s the kind of situation that no store manager wants to be in.
That’s what happened to the manager of Buddy’s Small Lots in Wayne N.J. this past Sunday. He rushed to the store after being called by the police only to find when he arrived that there appeared to be no sign of a break in. Upon checking the surveillance footage they saw four young men leaving casually out of the same front door that they had entered through carrying a few small items.
The manager and police then took a closer look at the surveillance footage from other store cameras and found that the camera behind the cash register showed two of the young men holding their “purchases” up for the camera to see and then holding up the money which they left on the counter. The money was the exact amount due for what they had taken, a pack of batteries and an audio cable for the speakers in their dorm — including the tax!
The lock on the door was apparently broken and through some quirk in the wiring the lights in the store were on. All of the surrounding stores were open and the four entered thinking that the store was too. Being in a hurry to get back to football practice at nearby William Paterson University where they are all freshmen, when no one appeared to ring up their purchases they simply paid and left.
The manager was so impressed with their honesty that he immediately set out to find them by notifying the local media in hopes they would come forward. They did and were each rewarded with a $50 gift card for the store.
The four, Thomas James, Anthony Biondi, Kell’e Gallimore and Jelani Bruce, are all freshmen at the college and all are football players. They were confused by what they found when they entered the empty store and said that they thought someone was pulling a prank and would jump out to startle them at any moment.
In a time when it seems like the only news we hear about young men of this age is bad news, it’s thoroughly refreshing to see this kind of honesty from these four wonderful guys! Faith in humanity restored.
Watch a report from Today about the incident:
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