Owner of Looted Store Says She Was Threatened for Working with Police

A business owner in Cleveland, Ohio, said Monday that she has received threats for cooperating with police investigating the looting of her store in May.

“The store has gotten some threats, just that when it rebuilds it’s going to get hit again,” Colossal Cupcakes owner Kelly Kandah told Fox & Friends.

Kandah added that people told her “my cooperation is unfair, that I shouldn’t be cooperating with the FBI. That it’s against the cause, which I am actually absolutely for the cause, but it’s upsetting people that I would get involved with the police over something such as property.”

Kandah’s store was initially looted and vandalized during George Floyd protests and riots in Cleveland on May 30.

“Several businesses were damaged, including Colossal Cupcakes. Staff there hid in the bathroom as looters broke in the front windows. Owner Kelly Kandah said everything was either gone or destroyed after the incident,” Fox 8 reported.

Later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested 22-year-old suspect Tandre Buchanan Jr. on June 11 after he was seen in surveillance footage using a stool to smash the establishment’s windows.

A week after her business was destroyed, Kandah said a man threatened her as she stood outside the store.

“I was showing some of the damage and I was leaving, a friend and myself, and someone walking by approached us and said, ‘When the store rebuilds, when you rebuild this, I’m going to come back and destroy it again and you.’ He kept walking and was gone,” she recalled.

Monday, Kandah noted that she felt scared to reopen and it made her sad to think that people were criticizing her for calling the police.

“Unfortunately my store is not open right now and I’m so involved with the community and I’m so involved with our inner-city schools and I’m so for the cause that I do a lot of community service,” Kandah explained, adding that right now she was unable to do those things.

“I don’t have anything being brought in to be able to donate as much as I usually do,” she concluded.