Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

FORT GOOD HOPE (Sep 27/99) - Seven break and enters occurred on Sept. 22 in the community of Fort Good Hope.

The Power Corp. building, the daycare, the housing authority, the hunters and trappers offices and several other places were all broken into with merchandise stolen and vandalism taking place, according to Cpl. Marion Lemothe of the RCMP.

He said two young offenders between the ages of 13 and 15 are in custody and the police are still investigating to see if anyone else was involved.

The Wednesday night break-ins happened during a week when school was out for teachers meetings.

"School was out at noon on Tuesday and they're not going back until Monday, so the kids are out more," Lemothe said Sept. 23.

"For the two teenagers who we did arrest, one is being charged with 16 counts and the other is being charged with 13 counts. The charges range. Most of them are break and enters, some are for mischief and one is theft."

Lemothe said the summer was particularly bad for break and enters, with about 30 in total.

The frequency went down when school went back in but the holidays last week were partly responsible for the mischief.

"(All the break and enters) were done by a small group of teenagers for the most part," Lemothe said.

"In the next little while further charges are probably going to be laid against other teenagers and maybe some young adults. We haven't completed the investigations."

He said sometimes there was quite a bit of damage to areas such as the daycare kitchen, which was ransacked.

There were also a few attacks on safes.

"In two of the three cases the safes were destroyed. In the other case it was damaged, but repairable."

Probably the business which caught the worst of the break-ins was the Co-op store, which was broken into five times during the past few months, Lemothe said.

In the third break-in, more than $9,000 went missing. The police have recovered $5,000 of that money as well as the offender, Lemothe said.

"When school is out there is no requirement for the kids to get up at 8 a.m. to go to school. It's also because it's daylight and warm so it's more conducive to be outside," he said.