Photo: Getty Images
Christmas Eve is supposed to be a time where family and friends gather to spend the holiday together. One Nashville man, however, had to deal with a not-so-cheerful start to the day when he was called to his restaurant after a burglar broke in and hid in the ceiling.
James Figueredo is the general manager for Boombozz Craft Pizza & Tap House in East Nashville. Around 2 a..m. December 24, he arrived at his Russell Street restaurant to see Metro Nashville Police and K9 units searching the area for a man who had been captured by a surveillance camera breaking in, WKRN reports. At that time, the search had failed to locate the suspect, who had broken the glass front door and gotten into the cash register.
While looking around, Figueredo noticed a footprint on the kitchen counter as well as out-of-place ceiling tiles. Within the hour, he said, 20 SWAT team members were on the scene with drones, night vision goggles, and other equipment to find the suspect they now believe was hiding in the ceiling.
The hours-long standoff where police searched for and negotiated with the suspect, including police using a smoke grenade to get the suspect out of the ceiling, eventually ended with the man surrendering and being taken into custody. The suspect, identified as 34-year-old Robert Dowell, reportedly admitted to police that he broke in to the restaurant because he was "hungry, and thirsty, and pizza sounded good."
Unfortunately for Figueredo, this wasn't the first time his restaurant was targeted by a criminal. The Christmas Eve break-in was the third in 2021 alone, which have totaled about $30,000 in damages. Despite this, he told the news outlet he plans to stay where he is.
"I love this community. I will always come back because I love this community, but the leaders in the community owe the community better in taking care of us and keeping crime to a minimum," he said, also suggesting that a police should increase their presence in the area.