Roughly 12 hours after the last competitor in the Charlottesville Marathon finished the annual race, the Charlottesville Running Company was robbed. Early Sunday morning, a city police officer noticed the door to the five-year-old Downtown Mall shop on Old Preston Avenue was open; law enforcement found that someone cracked the store’s wooden doorframe, pried open a cash register to take money and checks, then fled.
General manager Francesca Conte says that no employees were harmed, and that not so much as a single shoe seems to be missing from the shop’s inventory. "They could’ve taken something difficult to replace," says Conte, who noted that the store’s computer system and gait analysis technology was left in the store. Charlottesville Running Company opened for business at the usual time on Sunday; Conte says she has not heard any reports on suspects from local police.
Although the robbery is the first such incident in the store’s five years of business, Conte says that it’s "no coincidence" that it took place the evening following the marathon, the busiest time of the year at the store (which hosts the race).
"Someone knew that the marathon was going on, [and] knew the store well enough to know how quickly they could get in and out," says Conte.
