Students at BCI are feeling deflated after their giant Santa was stolen this week, while other Holmedale residents also have been hit by one or more Grinches taking festive lawn decorations.
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“Do we have a serial Santa-snatcher on the loose?” said Monique Hunsley, a member of the Holmedale Neighborhood Association on Friday.
A family on Edwin Street lost five large inflatables and several others reported their giant Santas were taken. Surveillance video viewed at Brantford Collegiate Institute showed a couple of people loading the stolen Santa from that facility into a pickup truck that seemed to contain other deflated Santas and Christmas decorations.
“The kids were loving the giant Santa here,” said Renate Gooder, who works at BCI in an office overlooking the entrance where Santa greeted students and staff.
“One of our guidance counselors got it and all the kids loved taking photos with it. Now, we’re all very disappointed and angry,” said Gooder.
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“The kids are all asking ‘Where did Santa go?’ It’s Christmas and there’s a Grinch out there.”
Becci Donaldson, who lives on Edwin Street, said she and her husband, John, had one of the first giant Santas in the neighborhood before the area adopted the huge inflatable as a sort of Holmedale mascot and Santa challenge.
That decoration and four others was taken about the same time as the BCI Santa.
There are more than 150 of the huge figures in the Holmedale area and many families have enjoyed driving the streets trying to locate them all.
“It was very upsetting to see everything gone in the morning,” Donaldson said.
“We had the giant Santa, a pride snowman, a pride unicorn, a Fa-la-llama and a big reindeer. and our grandkids loved seeing them when they visited.”
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John Donaldson quickly got another inflatable – this one saying ‘JOY’ with an arms-raised Santa making the ‘Y’ in the sign.
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” he posted on Facebook, “they didn’t steal our (JOY)”
The couple was also tickled that some neighbor anonymously sent them a four-foot inflatable hippo from Amazon to restart their Christmas collection.
“It makes our hearts happy that we have new ones but we screwed them down further and wrote our names on the back of them,” said Becci Donaldson, who, with Hunsley, spends a lot of time and energy in ‘Operation JOY’ where they raise funds to provide Christmas goodies for area families in need.
Hunsley said the theft at the Donaldson property was a “crappy thing to do to a really nice person”, adding that others in the area have had the giant lawn ornaments taken as well.
Surveillance video in the Santa-snatching has been turned over to the police.
@EXPSGamble
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