Canton Repository: Movie-goers a target for car thieves

Ken Samblanet took his son, Dustin, to see a movie in an attempt to cheer him up.

But when “Matrix Reloaded” ended, the father and son stepped out into Tinseltown Theatre’s parking lot only to notice something was missing.

Dustin’s truck.

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The Samblanets aren’t the only movie-goers finding themselves the prey of vandals and thieves, police say.

According to police reports, within the past two weeks at Tinseltown: 19-year-old Dustin’s truck was stolen; a Canton woman’s karaoke system, valued at $1,000, was taken from her car; someone jumped on the roof of a 1993 Geo causing it to collapse; a 50-year-old Canton man reported another threatened to slash his tires with a knife there; and CD players were removed from two locked vehicles.

The vandalism and thefts have occurred both at night and during the day.

"It seems like they just watch for someone to go in the theater," Ken Samblanet said Wednesday. "By the time we left the theater, that truck was probably long gone. It’s hard to believe — it was broad daylight."

OFCC PAC Commentary:
From purse-snatching operations in Cincinnati and Columbus, to burglaries, vandalism and car theft in this Massillon movie theatre parking lot, it is obvious that Gahanna Police Chief Murphy was right when he told Senators that the safest place for a CCW-licenseholder's firearm is on the hip of it's owner. Senators should resist any attempts to add new "victim zones" to HB12, and should remove the ones which were inserted by the House.

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