Paul Bass Photos
Dillon: They even stole teddy bears.
Tahmir Riddick, 16 months old, did get a Tonka truck before supplies ran out.
An emergency call went out Monday for kids’ coats and toys after thousands of dollars of donated Christmas presents disappeared from the Dixwell police substation.
The theft occurred Saturday.
Organizers of an annual Christmas clothing-and-toy giveaway had packed the substation’s community room Friday evening with “enough to give every kid in New Haven three toys,” a teddy bear, and a coat, said Methashar Dillon, the event’s driving force.
The room was so full you could barely walk through it. The donations included nine chest-high boxes of presents from a Toys for Tots warehouse in Wallingford. The warehouse had called Dillon late in the week telling her she could have them if she could find a truck to retrieve them. Dillon did.
She and fellow organizers returned to the substation community room Saturday afternoon to make final preparations for a three-day giveaway slated to begin Sunday, for which some 3,000 families had signed up.
They arrived to find almost all the coats missing. Six of the chest-high boxes of toys were completely “cleaned out,” along with half of another three boxes.
Dillon — who organizes a similar Thanksgiving food giveaway, in the name of the late Dixwell community activist Mae Ola Riddick — estimated the cost of the stolen donations at $20,000.
Dixwell cop Savannah Smith was investigating the theft Sunday, as Dillon and fellow volunteers did their best serving the first 1,000 people signed up for donations.
“All the big toys are gone. All the infant toys are gone. We were wiped out,” Dillon said. Even most of the teddy bears vanished; she’d planned to give each kid one along with a gift and coat.
“This is the end of the coats,” she said at 6:30 p.m.
Most kids did leave with something Sunday. Dakiri Wilson, 3, received one of the last OshKosh B’Gosh coats.
Dillon put out an emergency appeal for people to donate toys and coats and boots in time for the opening of the second day of the giveaway at noon Monday. Donors can drop off items at the police substation at 26 Charles St. or contact Dillon at 860 – 810-7153.
Meanwhile, conversations with eyewitnesses and volunteers from two separate giveaway groups offered some clues about how and when the Grinch struck.
A $100 Promise
Families line up Sunday for toys and coats.
Dillon, who grew up in New Haven, arranges massive holiday giveaways in cities across the state through a not-for-profit called The Kingdom International Economic Development Corporation.
In New Haven she works with Lt. Sam Brown, top cop in the Dixwell neighborhood. Brown directed Dillon’s team to store all of this year’s Christmas donations in his office so he could keep it locked until Saturday night. That was because a different organization — a not-for-profit called Rite-Way for Kids that also does holiday coat and toy giveaways — had an event planned at the substation on Saturday afternoon.
Then, according to both Brown and Dillon, Brown called Dillon Thursday night to tell her it was OK to set up all the stuff in the community room on Friday. Brown said the organizer of Rite-Way for Kids had told him she had called off Saturday’s event.
It turned out Rite-Way did hold an event on Saturday afternoon at the substation. Brown was out of town, but another officer opened the facility for the organization.
Originally Rite-Way had planned to give away toys and coats. Rite-Way’s president, who asked not to be named in this article, said in an interview Sunday evening in her home near the substation woman that she has organized these giveaways in different New Haven neighborhoods for 16 years.
This year, as usual, the president drove last week to East Haven to pick up boxes of donated toys from Toys for Tots. When she arrived, she said, she was told that this year she needed to drive to a warehouse in Wallingford to get the toys.
“My car can’t make it to Wallingford,” she said. So she decided to proceed with the event by giving away donated coats she had collected. She also asked participants to arrive with copies of their United Illuminating bills; she would sign them up to switch to another energy company, called Verde Energy, that she said would mail them $100 rebates at some point over the next month.
Crowds showed up. The president, aware of Dillon’s planned Sunday event, said she told people they could return the next day to get toys.
The president’s sister-in-law, Lachelle Fountain, helped out at the Saturday Rite-Way event. For a while.
At one point, Fountain said, she saw other volunteers carrying the donated coats to their cars.
Fountain didn’t know them; she didn’t want to confront them, she said. Instead, she decided, “I’m not going to be part of that.” So she left.
At about that time Rite-Way’s president pulled up. The president said she peeked inside the cars of the volunteers and saw the coats before they drove away.
She decided not to confront them either, she said.
“They were my volunteers. I didn’t care about them getting coats for their grandkids. I have a lot of coats” left to give away, she said.
But she was adamant about one point: “Nobody stole any toys!”
Counting On New Haven
Somebody somewhere stole a lot of toys.
At least that’s what Metashar Dillon’s volunteers discovered when they arrived late Saturday afternoon following the Rite-Way event to finish preparing for their Sunday event. They saw the boxes cleaned out, most of the teddy bears and coats gone, and piles of toys removed from the shelves.
Contributed Photo
Boxes that originally looked like this on Friday night …
… looked like this on Sunday.
On Sunday Dillon’s crew also heard from people who had attended the Saturday event and were told to come back for toys.
Two of those people — Dixwell residents Nancy Brown and Ryan Griggs (pictured) — told the Independent they saw people absconding with trash bags full of toys on Saturday. “They were carrying the toys out with their hands,” Brown said.
DIllon plans to arrive early Monday, around 9 a.m., to prepare for the noon opening of day two of the giveaway; at least 2,000 families have signed up for the last two days, with many more walk-ins expected. Dillon is counting on New Haveners to come through with last-minute donations to keep kids warm and smiling for Christmas.
Lt. Brown with Dillon at WNHH radio.
Click on or download the above sound file to hear a recent interview about the Dixwell giveaways with Dillon and Brown on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven.”
To make a donation for the drive, drop off coats or toys at the police substation at 26 Charles St. or contact Dillon at 860 – 810-7153.
The police substation was burglarized.
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