The "One Stop Shop Robbery" by Michael Martin, ECPD Retired

About the author...Michael Martin (pictured front row, far right in the 1981 photo) is a retired veteran of 25 years on the Eden City Police Department, and has penned a number of anecdotal writings recalling his experiences.

This was about 1987. As the detective division came in to work, we got a call that there had been a roof-entry burglary at the one stop on Aiken Road. We responded to learn that someone had crawled onto the roof of the One Stop Shop on Aiken Road and had torn up an air vent and entered. Once inside, the thieves had stolen all the "Budweiser" beer in the store.

While we were there in the early morning hours, we saw a man we knew who worked the third shift, moving trailers to and from the brewery and drove up and down Aiken Road all night. He was getting off and stopped for a pack of smokes. We asked him if he had seen any people around the One Stop. He recalled that he had seen a girl and a boy walking towards the roundhouse road on Aiken, carrying plastic trash bags and he had assumed they were carrying laundry.

We thanked him and drove up Aiken towards the Roundhouse Road intersection when we spotted a can of Budweiser, it was lying too close to the road to have been thrown from a car. We stopped and found the can of beer was full and still cold. We drove fifty yards and found another. We stayed on Aiken and found no more, so we went back to the Roundhouse Road and twenty yards up the Roundhouse road, we found another. As we passed Shannon Court, we saw another lying along the ditch on Shannon Court, then another. Shannon Court is a trailer park and we rode around the trailer park until we saw a full Budweiser lying in the yard of one trailer. We walked up to the trailer and knocked on the door and a bleary-eyed fellow came to the door and we told him we were investigating a burglary at the One Stop Shop and we would like to talk to him about it.

He actually invited us in and while he was explaining that he had been asleep all night and could not help us, a two year old child came from the back of the trailer, and walked to the refrigerator. Obviously looking for his morning's milk and he opened the door. There, in the fridge was about four hundred cans of Budweiser Beer. A solid wall of Budweiser. Our guy kinda dropped his head, then he asked...Would you guys like a beer???