A hungry thief helped himself to a midnight snack during a break-in at the Crawl Hill Esso Tigermarket yesterday morning.

Co-owner Lorna Dixon-Marable said turkey bacon and chicken nuggets were the only items found to be missing from the Hamilton Parish gas station.

She added: “When they left they tried to put everything back in place, the door was closed back in, nothing was ruffled — you really couldn’t tell that somebody had been rumbling in the station.

“But what we did discover when we spoke to our co-tenants, which is the Buzz, they had some food items missing.”

Ms Dixon-Marable said the only other item out of place was the Digicel top-up machine, which was later found out the back of the building.

She added: “I guess they got hungry after they couldn’t get the cash out of the Digicel machine. They took the machine outside, trying to break it open to get cash.

“And they just couldn’t get the cash and they were on the clock so they realised they needed to get going because police or somebody would show up soon so they grabbed a piece of turkey bacon and some chicken nuggets. We could not detect anything else missing. They were very neat, almost like they didn’t want to do any obvious damage to the station.”

Ms Dixon-Marable said it was the first break-in at the gas station in the fifteen years she has co-owned it.

She added: “We have had an attempted robbery at a kiosk, which is located on the forecourt where you gas up, about a year and a half ago and they got away with about $300 dollars.

“It’s stressful to know that you have been targeted but I am pretty calm that most of the security checks we have in place worked.

“They wouldn’t have been able to get to any cash that is housed in the station.”

Ms Dixon-Marable said she suspected the culprit or culprits were familiar with the gas station.

She said they entered through the back security door and knew to turn the camera away and switch off the power to disable the others, which meant they were not caught on film.

She said this also meant there were no lights on outside when the police came to check after the alarm went off some time after 12.30am.

Ms Dixon-Marable said they walked around the building but “everything seemed intact”.

She added: “You really wouldn’t have been able to see the Digicel machine which was left around the back of the building because all the lights were out.”

But Ms Dixon-Marable said the morning supervisor realised that the machine had been “misplaced” and that the cords had been cut.

Ms Dixon-Marable said: “That looked a little suspicious to her and she decided to investigate a little further.”

She said the supervisor called police after she realised that a piece of the back door handle was “was just hanging off the door”.

A police spokesman confirmed that officers were investigating the break-in, which he said happened sometime between 11pm and 6am.

He added: “It appears that suspects gained entry into the building and removed a Digicel card sale machine and also chicken tenders and bacon.”

Anyone with information on the break-in should contact police.