The Bliss Center for the Performing Arts wrapped up with the golden nights for the Festival of the Arts on Friday night. As a celebration of all the best performances, it was one of the fullest houses that the Bliss had seen for the course of the festival. And that's what a group of at least there men were thinking of when the got into the Bliss at 1:30 this morning, tied up the security guard and went hunting for money and weapons. Director William Neal told us what they got.
William, Director - ICA
"This morning I received a call saying that the security had three people masked, he was here in the lobby, and three masked men accosted him up, put him in the theatre, and then they proceeded to go into the administration section. Their main focus area was the finance office. They got in there, they brought the right tools to bust open the safe. They went through all the offices, basically searched through all the drawers for money, for whatever.
They finally gained access to the theatre manager's office and in there they went with some of the collections from the shows over the weekend and they
also went, this is the area that we use for the security for all of NICH so they went with two shotguns and two handguns.
They definitely knew what they were looking for. They were also aware that we have cameras put in place. They proceeded to disconnect all the cameras. They took all the security tapes as well so there is no record of exactly what happened, just a very shaken security guard given his take on what happened. Apparently around 4:30 or so he managed to get free, make his way out to the street, and get some assistance and then the police came but by that time they had been in the building for well over three hours so they had sufficient time to go through everything.
I don't understand why they targeted us. They didn't take like computers or anything like that so it was definitely money and probably the gun situation, they probably figured that we had guns for our security so I guess that's why they were really here."
Police have made no arrests.
