Cañon City Police releasing pictures of suspect behind local VFW burglary

CAÑON CITY, Colo. (KRDO) - Police are releasing pictures of the person seen on security camera footage burglarizing VFW Post 4061, taking thousands of dollars and causing thousands more in damages.

The Cañon City Police Department is asking the public to help identify this person. These pictures were taken from security camera footage from around midnight on December 27.

Cañon City Police say the suspect in the case stole over $3,000.00 in cash and caused damage to the property estimated to be over $1,000.00.

"It was almost devastation to me as a post commander. This is a sanctuary place for our veterans to hang out in," Jeffery Gill is the Post Commander for VFW Post 4061 in Cañon City.

Gill tells KRDO13 he came into the VFW building on Friday afternoon to help set up for Bingo. Gill said he knew something was wrong when the typically dark main room was lit up with sunlight.

"This is a place where we can meet and tell stories of what we did in the past," Gill said. "It's just a disgrace to what they did to our building."

Gill and his bar manager found the cash register empty, the jukebox opened up and the ATM along with the doors to the building were heavily damaged.

In total the VFW says the burglary inflicted $8,000 worth of damage; $3,000 in cash stolen and $5,000 in damage to the building.

"Whoever did this, you just ruined a bunch of veterans' lives. You just took away from them, and hurt me a lot," Gill said more than 200 veterans frequent VFW Post 4061 and they're devastated.

If there is a silver lining to this story it's that this burglary didn't close down the VFW Post for long. Gill says they've gotten everything cleaned up and even hosted a birthday party today.

Now the focus is on replacing everything that was damaged and improving the security so this doesn't happen again. Gill says they're getting new security cameras from the VFW organization.