By Karen Blackledge
WASHINGTONVILLE — Rebecca Faux and her children are afraid to stay in their apartment after it was burglarized Wednesday morning.
“We are definitely moving. I don’t feel safe here,” she said of their home at 42 Water St.
The burglary she reported to state police at Milton is the third since Sept. 18 in the Washingtonville area. A neighbor told her there appeared to be an attempt to enter his home as well.
“I want to make people aware of this,” Faux said of the borough of about 300 where she lives.
The state police officer investigating the other burglaries was on a day off Thursday. Police spokesman trooper Matthew Burrows said they don’t know yet whether the burglaries are related.
During the break-in at the Faux home, someone took most of Rebecca’s daughter’s birthday gifts and money she got at her birthday party at Kidsburg in Bloomsburg on Saturday. They also found $650 Rebecca had stuffed in papers behind food in a kitchen cabinet.
“My mom had sent me that money to pay the rent and to buy school stuff for the kids,” Faux said of daughter Virginia, who turned 8 on Sept. 30, and her son, Mikey, 5.
“We didn’t stay here last night. The kids are terrified,” Faux said Thursday.
“Mikey is afraid something will happen to me when I’m home by myself,” she said of her son, a kindergarten student at the Riverside Elementary School.
Her daughter, a second-grader at Riverside, cried when she found out the $10 she got in birthday money from her grandfather was stolen along with her other gifts, including a small TV and a DVD player.
The thief left behind a Barbie mermaid doll and a princess game.
Faux, 27, knew something was wrong when she went home for lunch and their young orange and white cat, Milo, was outside. They haven’t let him out since rescuing him from starving in Shamokin.
“The door was popped open,” she said of their main door, off Grape Alley in a complex of five apartments.
She saw greasy fingerprints on the light gray door, which had been locked, as well as scrapes on it. The door had buckled, and the door frame was damaged.
“We had lived upstairs until Aug. 1 but moved downstairs because of the stairs and the kids,” she said.
Faux had worked at the Danville McDonald’s Restaurant from 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. Wednesday and stopped at home for lunch and to pick up the mail.
“There were boot prints on the kitchen floor,” she said, showing where a kitchen cabinet door had been pulled off its hinges and a drawer pulled out.
The birthday presents were on the island in the kitchen, said Faux, who is separated from her husband, Michael. She said they are trying to get back together.
State police at Milton were expected to arrive today at the apartment to investigate.
Shirley Densberger, 78, of Washingtonville, told state police her home was entered through an unlocked door and a bottle containing prescription medication removed about Sept. 20. Joni Jane Crossley, 49, told police someone entered her unlocked home at 87 Blue Springs Trailer Court and took a bottle containing prescription medicine about Sept. 18.
