‘They cleaned me out’ Mobile, AL, police investigate break-ins at self-storage units
By BRENDAN KIRBY
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MOBILE, Alabama (WALA) — After getting an email a week ago from Airport/Schillinger Self Storage warning her that her unit was not secured, Zonnya Inge said she went to take a look.
Her heart sank.
“They cleaned me out,” she said.
Inge said an employee at the business told her about 20 units at the company’s Mobile locations recently had been broken into. A manager for the company told FOX10 News that the matter is an open police investigation and that she cannot comment on it.
Officer Katrina Frazier, a Mobile police spokeswoman, said detectives are investigating five active cases – three at the business where Inge was renting a unit and two other locations.
Inge said she rented the unit about six years ago when she got divorced and had to downsize.
“I’ve been saving for six years in order to buy a house after having a divorce,” she said. “So, I knew I couldn’t afford to buy everything at one time. So I was buying things little by little. My storage was full.”
All that is left now is a chair, a love seat, two dressers and a few odds and ends.
“When I opened it and saw the condition, it’s like my soul left my body,” Inge said. “I couldn’t imagine. I couldn’t understand or comprehend.”
Inge said she lost TV sets, a dinette set and numerous kitchen appliances and other furniture she has been buying in preparation of moving into a house, along with many smaller items she has collected from Dollar General clearance sales over the years.
The monetary loss exceeds $25,000, Inge said. But she added that it is the irreplaceable items that are the most heart-breaking. Those include family photos, pictures of her children, her high school diploma – even her wedding dress, which she had hoped to hand down to her daughter one day.
“These people are – they have to be hateful,” she said. They’re not good people for you to treat people like that. Work hard for what I have. And it’s just this has been a traumatizing experience.”
Addressing the thieves directly, she added: “I have no baby pictures. You took my scrapbook. Have no pictures on my son. You didn’t care. You just took whatever. And it didn’t belong to you.”
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