WESTFIELD, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) – While Mr. Whipy’s Golf Acres was anticipating a surge in visitors as the summer wraps up, but instead they had an unexpected visitor.
A masked man shattered their back window and broke into their register in an otherwise unsuccessful robbery. “To have somebody try to ruin something that we worked so hard to build back up, it definitely impacted me… We’ve never experienced anything like that.” Said Paul Hentink, the General Manager for Mr. Whipy’s.
For Hentnik, the break-in couldn’t have happened at a worse time with Westfield schools set to return next week, and business set to surge for the end of august. “With school coming up and everything we knew that a lot of people would be bringing their kids and grandkids and stuff like that. We wanted to make sure people wouldn’t be able to tell anything happened.” He said.
And with a Tuesday morning cleanup effort that even saw several employees come in on their day-off, it appears they accomplished exactly that. Still, employee Emma Lapoint told us that even with the extra hands, it was still far from an easy task: “It was a lot, there was glass everywhere. Stuff all over the floor, just a ton of mess everywhere.”
Now, with a shattered window in the rearview, Hentink told us Mr. Whipy’s is ready to finish the season strong, albeit with a little extra security.
“We ended up adding a lot more stuff to our building already this morning, so that if for any reason somebody gets the idea that, ‘oh this place is easy to get into,’ not anymore… We’re back open and ready to go and excited to keep things going.”
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