A long-time Arlington business was a victim of a crime right in the middle of the holidays.
Surveillance video shows what appeared to be someone stealing a Vespa from ‘The Italian Store’ in Arlington.
It happened on Saturday in the Westover neighborhood.
The Vespa belonged to the family that owns ‘The Italian Store’ for decades.
It became a tradition that every morning the stores Vespas were taken out and brought inside every evening when it started to get dark.
Robert Tramonte sells wine, pasta, cheese, and celebrates everything Italian at his business that has been around for nearly 40 years.
“We’ve really never had anything like this happen before,” Tramonte said.
His Classic 1966 Celeste Green Vespa -- the Italian scooter -- was snatched off the street.
“I was shook,” Danny Albrant, an employee at the store, said.
Video cameras showed a red car driving onto the parking lot, and it appeared to be two people inside.
Tramonte believed the car was a Ford Focus.
The cameras quickly switched to night vision.
The #Vespa was stolen from @TheItalianStore's Westover location on Saturday. @ArlingtonVaPD said the crime would be considered larceny of a moped @wusa9 pic.twitter.com/9c7roGjIax
— Michael Quander WUSA (@MikeQReports) December 6, 2017
The footage showed the driver started walking towards the store and turned around when they saw a woman.
About five minutes later, surveillance video showed the person walking in front of the store and looking up at the camera.
“He stares at it for a good six seconds,” Tramonte explained.
The face of the person was hard to see.
The same person was then seen on video walking back toward the parking lot while rolling the Vespa.
The two people then load the scooter into the car down the street and drive away.
“You know you sort of feel like — you feel violated a little bit. You feel like how could somebody do that,” Tramonte told WUSA9.
Much of the #Vespa stealing incident was caught on camera. We sat down with the owner of @TheItalianStore to go through every frame of the video. @wusa9 pic.twitter.com/QVh7yrlHcv
— Michael Quander WUSA (@MikeQReports) December 6, 2017
For the Tramonte family and the Arlington community, this is not just about a scooter but memories, tradition, and their peace of mind.
“What they did really goes against everything that we stand for in this community, in this part of Arlington, and really in The Italian Store as a whole,” Albrant said.
More than one thousand people have shared and commented about this on Facebook.
If you know anything, call Arlington County Police.
