Buffalo stolen from bookstore

Saturday morning the Milligan College bookstore was broken into and the stuffed buffalo head mounted above the cash register was stolen.

According to the report filed by patrol officer Shane Darling of the Elizabethton Police Department, two alarms were set off Saturday morning. The first alarm was set off at about 4:39 a.m. and the second alarm went off around 5:30 a.m.

Police officer White was on duty when the first alarm went off. Officer White and security guard Ed Yarwood examined the bookstore and presumed everything to be secure, Yarwood said.

The bookstore was only investigated through the window of the door because Yarwood did not have a key to open the bookstore.

Yarwood was also the security officer on duty when the second alarm went off. When Yarwood arrived, the door to the bookstore was ajar.

When investigators examined the bookstore they found that someone had tampered with the ceiling tiles outside the door and had damaged two tiles inside.

“It appears the subjects who broke into the store made entry through the ceiling outside the door, went across the outside wall of the bookstore through the ceiling and then back down into the bookstore,” Darling said.

“I don’t think it was an act of theft,” Bookstore Manager Jack Presnell said. “They could have taken a $50 sweater or anything else in the store that they wanted to but they only took the buffalo head. I think it was a prank.”

“It appears that after Yarwood and Officer White left the scene (after the first alarm), the subjects then exited the front door, thus activating the door alarm with the buffalo head,” Darling said.

Dean of Students Mark Fox was out of town for the weekend and was unavailable for comment.