‘Shame on You’: Pizzeria Owner Laments Costly Break-In That Damaged Front Entrance

Why would anyone smash the front door and sneak into a closed pizza restaurant in the middle of the night? That’s what the owner of a Fellini’s Pizzeria location in Jefferson Hills, Pennsylvania, wants to know. 

The break-in apparently happened in the early morning of Saturday, April 5. In a tone that conveyed hurt and heartbreak rather than anger, the owner posted about it this weekend on Facebook.

“Who does this to a small local business? Like…why??” the post read. “What it takes for us to clean up, replace [damaged property], and lose business for the morning or the day costs so much more than anything anyone can take out of this building against our will.”

“My heart is broken,” the owner continued. “We have teenagers who work here and an adult staff who all put their hearts and souls into our business. They lose work when we’re not opened. So for us, the money you took was the lesser of your evils. You cost us unnecessary repairs and down time for our staff who rely on their paychecks to be filled with the hours they are scheduled….Shame on you.”

According to the post, the Jefferson Hills Police Department (JHPD) is investigating the break-in. Replying to a comment on the Facebook post, the Fellini’s owner said the restaurant and other nearby businesses have security cameras that likely recorded the thief in action. “We turned all the camera video over to the JHPD, so now we’re just waiting and praying,” they said.

Fellini’s also noted that the thief “went after a PA Skills game we have in the building.” Pennsylvania Skills is a machine offering various skills games such as Gem Master, Wildebeest Wild and Pirates. “He just destroyed a lot of our property to get to it, which was so unnecessary and so sad.”

Nikki Williams, the restaurant’s manager, offered more detail to CBS News. “He smashed [it] down with one arm, and it was so fast. I don’t know how he did it because it’s a heavy machine. He just used a hammer and wailed at it.”

Williams added, “The odds were not in his favor. I think he was angry. He targeted only this machine. He didn’t touch anything else in the store.”

Specializing in pizza, hoagies, calzones and wings, Fellini’s Pizzeria has six locations in Pennsylvania.