On Saturday (December 9), a generator went missing from the Festival of Lights, and Coordinator Michelle Pirzek is concerned that it may have been stolen.

The generator, borrowed from a Festival of Lights board member, was being used to light the Festival's sponsor board. At some point Saturday night, the board went dark.

"As we understand, it was placed out at 6:00pm," said Pirzek, "They went to retrieve it at 9:30pm when we were closing and it was gone."

Pirzek said they were able to confirm that the generator was still on site at 7:30pm. Sometime after that it vanished.

The generator was a temporary way of powering the board until a permanent solution could be found. Pirzek said the possible theft forced their hand, and they had an electrician come out on Sunday afternoon to wire the board so it would remain lit. Even so, they will need to replace the generator if it's not recovered.

Pirzek thinks whoever took the generator may have blended in, appearing to any witnesses as a Festival of Lights worker.

"I wonder if it went missing toward the end of the evening when we should be packing up, that it looked natural for someone to be loading it up to put it away, but they continued driving out of the park with it. It was a very busy night that night, we had probably over eight thousand people down at the park. People may not realize what they saw."

Police have been notified about the incident, and Cst. Dan Martin said they are looking into it.

"Police don't have a whole lot of details at this point other than it was a Honda 3500 generator. At this point the matter is still under investigation and if there were any witnesses we'd ask that they come forward."

 

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