2 weeks ago
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FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – A beloved java store successful Fresno’s Tower District is picking up the pieces aft different circular of vandalism, but the owners accidental they’re not going anywhere.
On Sunday morning, the Fresno Police Department says officers responded to calls of a burglary astatine Component Coffee and Tower Yoga connected Olive Avenue.
But erstwhile they arrived, constabulary accidental officers recovered it wasn’t a break-in. Instead, idiosyncratic had smashed the business’s windows.
“There had been a taxable that had conscionable near the country that had breached aggregate windows astatine the business,” Sergeant Diana Vega with the Fresno Police Department said.
Thanks to witnesses nearby, Vega says officers rapidly arrested 38-year-old Danny Alfredo Vega.
Still, the harm was done, leaving Component Coffee's owners to prime up the pieces.
“Again?” Co-owner of Component Coffee, Greg Amend, said. "Really?"
Amend says helium and his squad had already replaced the shop’s windows 5 times successful January alone. Sunday’s incidental marks yet different setback for the business.
“It’s discouraging to america arsenic owners, to our staff, to our families,” Amend said. “This is our livelihood. To spot idiosyncratic marque the determination to vandalize a gathering they person nary affiliation with, it’s truly sad.”
Longtime customers similar Fresno City College teacher Paul Gilmore accidental Component Coffee is much than a business; it’s a pillar successful the neighborhood.
“I moved present successful 2001, and erstwhile I was looking for a spot to live, it was the archetypal spot I stopped,” Gilmore said.
He worries that continued vandalism could 1 time unit the café to close, recalling the interaction of losing different section fixture.
“This spot is an anchor,” Gilmore said. “It was the saddest happening successful the satellite erstwhile the Chicken Pie Shop closed."
Gilmore says Component serves arsenic a "homebase" successful the Tower District and does its just stock of contributing to neighboring businesses.
"To person a spot anchor a vicinity for arsenic agelong arsenic this 1 has, it’s truly utile for different businesses.”
But contempt the frustration, Amend says the outpouring of enactment from the assemblage makes it clear, Component isn’t going anywhere.
“There’s thing peculiar astir coffee. It brings radical together, and that’s what we’re present to do,” helium said. “We emotion Tower. We emotion this location. We’re rebuilding and we’re present for the agelong haul.”
A GoFundMe campaign has been launched to assistance regenerate the breached windows.
