York Regional Police (YRP) is searching for two suspects involved in the theft of an $8,000 Gibson Custom Shop 60th Anniversary ’59 Les Paul Standard electric guitar.
The male suspect is seen on video surveillance footage hiding the guitar in his pants and covering it with his sweater. The other suspect involved was the driver of the vehicle that was used to flee the scene.
Rudi Brouwers, the chief operating officer for Cosmo Music says that the alarm system had gone off when the suspect was leaving the store. Security approached the suspect and followed the standard procedures but found everything to be fine.
“We have systems in place that mitigate theft as much as possible. We have over 150 cameras on-site that record video that is kept for almost a year. We can track movement of products throughout our facility by day and time. If a guitar is missing when we do our regular inventory checks, we can review the video footage and determine what has happened to it.”
Brouwers says that a similar incident has happened before in 2020 when a high-end horn valued at $4,500 was stolen. “Luckily for us, with bigger ticket items it doesn’t happen often.” Police were able to catch the suspect after CityNews released a newscast on the theft.
Brouwers believes that the 2 suspects will be found, due to the amount of media coverage it has gotten so far.
“Our purchasing team will make the decision to replace it or not. It is unlikely that we will see the guitar again since the thieves probably sold it to someone fairly quickly. What we will see once these individuals are caught, is the courts imposing a restitution order to pay us for our financial loss. We may not see the full value paid but will receive some funds back to help offset the loss.”
10 days after the incident took place, a police report was filed and YRP is still investigating and searching for the suspects involved.
Police describe the suspects as being white men in their 20s and the suspect who hid the guitar in his pants was wearing “extremely large, baggy pants”.
Police encourage anybody with any information to report it by contacting York Regional Police or Crime Stoppers.
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