RICARDO, Tx — Cheyanne Bumgarner has worked at Kwik Pantry for five years and a typical day consists of an 8 hour shift of greeting customers who usually greet back, along with other various duties.
But March 26 was anything but typical for Bumgarner. She witnessed her first crime.
“Usually I greet everybody when the door opens but when I greeted these people, they kind of just kept looking straight and I had a gut feeling of, oh man what’s going to happen now,” Bumgarner said.
Bumgarner said a man wearing a hoodie and a woman who she had never seen before walked into the convenience store and split up. Bumgarner was the only worker the night of the crime.
“The lady was walking in the aisle right here and I think she knocked over a jar of honey. It was a pretty big jar. I think to get my attention, to distract me from what the guy was doing,” Bumgarner recalled.
But that wasn’t the only attempt at a distraction. The woman tried getting Cheyanne to leave the front counter to help her grab a beverage, which Bumgarner said was right infront of the woman.
Meanwhile, the man was on the opposite side of the store, Bumgarner said lingering around her boss’s book bag that was left on a table, where he thought it was safe.
“She said she was going to pay for her stuff she left her stuff on the counter. She said ‘oh I left my wallet in the car I’ll be right back.’ I said okay and she just didn’t come back inside,” Bumgarner said.
Neither the man nor the woman came back. Bumgarner said she looked around to see if any merchandise was out of place or taken but could not find anything off. But there was one thing missing: her boss’s book bag.
Store workers didn’t notice the bag was gone until the next day. Bumgarner said the man may have thought there were valuable items like a laptop or money in the book bag, but it was just papers. Even though there was not much loss, there was a loss of trust for locals in Ricardo knowing the town’s main stop and shop was intentionally hit.
“It’s like somebody coming into your house and invading your privacy. Those people, if they were or weren’t from here, they still invaded our privacy that we trust each other in a small community,” Ricardo resident Mario Mendietta said.
“In a sense, it’s a little disheartening because all the people of Ricardo come out here hang out eat lunch. I like coming to work and the sense of community we have here, but having to be on edge with something like that happening, it throws you off a little bit,” Bumgarner said.
The Kleberg County Sheriffs Office is still looking for the two individuals involved in the crime. They urge anyone who knows anything of the two suspects to contact the Sheriff’s Office, even anonymously, at 361- 595-8500.
For the latest local news updates, click here, or download the KRIS 6 News App.
