Thieves caused thousands of pounds worth of damage to a Fife charity shop when they broke in though the roof.
The culprits caused the ceiling at Benarty Community Shop in Ballingry to collapse, before making off with around £1,000 worth of items, including a coffee machine bought for the local community cafe.
Police are appealing for witnesses as they try to track down the criminals, who struck overnight between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning.
The shop is staffed by volunteers and run by Benarty Community Forum, a registered charity raising funds for local projects.
Forum chairman Tom Kinnaird said: “The volunteers are absolutely distraught. They’re just in tears. All their hard work and hours they put into this place.
“Some of them in there are putting in a full time job’s worth of hours.
“To break into a charity shop and steal from the community, that’s low.”
The thieves removed tiles from the roof before breaking through into the shop and stealing jewellery, video games and a bottle of vodka being kept for a fundraising tombola, as well as the premises’ CCTV camera.
They also stole a new coffee machine, which was to be used in the community cafe the forum are planning to open at Benarty Square.
Mr Kinnaird said: “The plan was to branch out this year and have a community coffee shop, and we’d bought a very high end coffee machine. We were all ready and had tables and chairs already set out, and the serving area almost there, then Covid-19 hit and knocked us all back with our plans.
“They took the coffee machine and the coffee beans.”
He added: “They took the CCTV recorder, which has no huge monetary value but must have taken a considerable amount of time.”
With Storm Francis approaching, the roof had to be repaired quickly to make the building wind and watertight again.
Mr Kinnaird thanked local builder Kevin Mclean for carrying out the repair free of charge.
“That saved us thousands of pounds,” he added.
A spokesperson for Police Scotland said: “Police Scotland is carrying out enquiries after a break-in to shop premises in Benarty Square, Ballingry, sometime between 4pm on Sunday August 23 and 8am on Monday August 24.
“Anyone with any information is asked to call 101 quoting incident 0568 of August 24.”
