FALL RIVER — Faneek’s opened for regular business Wednesday morning hours after a determined, rock-wielding man tried to rob a restaurant that serves some of Fall River’s favorite franks.
“Nothing stops this place, nothing,” said former owner Dave Ploude, who still works at the 269 Rhode Island Ave. restaurant.
Two years ago, the restaurant that opened in 1966 sold to Ploude’s nephew, Chris Carpenter and his wife, Liz.
An alert from Faneek’s security system popped up on Liz Carpenter’s phone just about 10:20 p.m. Tuesday, she said.
She checked the security camera footage on her phone. It showed what appeared to be a man wearing a hoodie run toward the cash register.
Ploude said the suspect gained entry by throwing a large rock at the bottom of the glass door with enough force to break it open, then crawled inside.
As the man bee-lined toward the register, he knocked over a wireless security camera that was sitting on the front counter, Ploude said.
Typically, the camera is affixed to the wall above the register but was taken down the day of the break-in so its battery could charge, Carpenter said.
Liz Carpenter suspects the man knew where the camera was positioned. She said she is reviewing footage from earlier in the day to see whether a customer at the restaurant Tuesday resembled the suspect.
”It’s awful to think that that was someone I served, and smiled at,” she said, then, with a lighthearted laugh, mimicked what she might have said to the robber.
“‘Have a great day, come back and ruin my night!” she joked.
About 12 hours after the break-in, Liz Carpenter watched as Somerset Glass installers Derek Correia and Bob Leduc positioned a new pane of reinforced laminated glass in the door's frame.
Leduc said he used to get lunch at Faneek’s every day when he worked at National Glass Company around the block. He said whoever smashed the glass was “determined to get in.”
“It’s laminated safety glass that’s in the door so they really had to work at it in order to break that piece out,” Leduc said.
For what? Leduc wondered. “You’re gonna take hot dogs and buns?”
But the unidentified man didn’t steal even a bun, Ploude and Carpenter said. After muscling into the restaurant, the man realized the door of the cash register was open, and the register was empty.
“My father used to own it,” Ploude said of Faneek’s. “I used to own it, and my sister used to own it. Experience told us if the register’s closed, they’re going to break in to find out its empty, so leave it open. At least it doesn’t cost you a cash register.”
Carpenter posted security camera footage on Facebook that captured the suspect’s entry in the hopes that someone out there knows who he is.
She isn’t bitter, far from it. She wondered aloud what drove the man to try to rob her restaurant, and has sympathy for him.
“It’s desperate times. You have to be in a desperate situation to have that happen to actually break into someone’s restaurant, come in, find nothing. I almost feel bad for him, whoever it was,” she said.