Burglars steal from fire-damaged Bear apartments

Residents of the Village of Canterbury Apartments in Bear returned back to the building destroyed by fire to find their belongings stolen Thursday. 

"This is too much for words," resident Warda Bennane said. "First, we lost our home, then we lose our stuff."

The Tuesday fire started in the complex in the late afternoon and burned a third-floor apartment but also caused extensive water damage throughout the building. 

Bennane's ceiling partially collapsed into her living room.

Once the fire was out, residents were given less than a half an hour to collect some of their belongings before they began padlocking the doors. 

The residents of all 12 units in the building headed to hotels, motels or the homes of friends or family, thinking their possessions would be safe. 

Carolyn Boyser, who has lived in the apartments for two and a half years, said the day of the fire, she was just glad her cat was saved. 

"I knew it was going to be a long road ahead, but I hadn't even thought about this as a possibility because I thought the deadbolts would be enough," Boyser said. 

She came back Thursday to find the deadbolts unscrewed, she said. Boyser said her apartment, already in disarray from the water damage, looked ransacked. 

Then she saw a hole between her apartment and her neighbor's from her living room into his. 

"They unscrewed the deadbolt to the door, and then they busted through walls from there on out," Boyser said. 

She and her neighbors had watches, shoes, jewelry, TVs, computers, gaming consoles and other belongings taken in the looting. 

Bennane said she lost valuables worth more than what renter's insurance can pay. 

"They went through and cleaned me out. They knew what they were looking for," she said. 

New Castle County police reported eight apartments were robbed.

Michael Iacono, spokesman for the apartment complex, said the complex did not provide surveillance for the building over the two-day span. 

"The day of the fire, we didn't think we needed guards because we boarded up sliders, dead-bolted the doors, boarded windows, but these people still found a way to get in," Iacono said. 

The complex will have guards patrolling the area from dusk to dawn until Monday, he said. 

Contact Josephine Peterson at (302) 324-2856 or jhpeterson@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jopeterson93.