The owners of a café in downtown Toronto are speaking out after their business was targeted by vandals twice in one week.
The first incident – a break-and-enter – happened on March 16, while the second, a case of mischief, took place on March 23, according to Toronto police.
“Both are currently under investigation, and there has been no arrests at this time,” a media officer said in an email to CTV News Toronto.
The affected establishment, Goldstruck Coffee, is located at 133 Richmond St. W., just west of York Street.
Margarita Dvorkina’s family owns the coffee shop, which has another location in Yorkville and a third under construction on Carlton Street.
On Tuesday, Dvorkina showed CTV News Toronto security footage of a masked individual smashing the glass door and entering the downtown location the morning of March 16.
“They broke the door, broke the glass, came into the shop, stole several things and left,” she explained.
In security footage from March 24, also reviewed by CTV News Toronto, a person is seen standing outside the café, shielding their face from the camera, then using an object to break the front window before running off.
“I do personally, unfortunately, believe that this may be hate-motivated, said Dvorkina, whose family is Jewish.
Toronto police say they are not treating the two incidents as hate motivated at this time.
Dvorkina went on to say that someone also painted a Star of David symbol on a wall at their soon-to-open location near Toronto Metropolitan University last month, an act she believes is a signal for hate-motivated people to attack and is not a coincidence.
“We have already finalized the lease and we have started renovations at the third location of our coffee shop. Unfortunately, shortly after we finalized the details, we discovered that overnight, the premises was spraypainted with a Star of David,” Dvorkina said, adding that the two recent incidents at their downtown location came on the heels of a performance by Hebrew singer and artists Dina Levin at their Yorkville café.
“We’re feeling shocked. We would like to think that the city can do much better than this,” she said.
At Goldstruck’s York Street location on Tuesday, the door is once again boarded up as staff try to make sense of what happened.
“As a small business, we are having a hard time. And our employees, including me, we are not feeling OK in some ways, emotionally and mentally,” said manager Wali Ullah, who added the team is concerned that something bad could happen during business hours and are being extra vigilant.
“Our higher management is working with the authorities at this point just to understand what’s going on.”
With files from CTV News Toronto’s Sean Leathong
