Three Blacks Photography stores across the municipality are offering to match a $500 reward for the safe return of a stolen laptop belonging to an American family visiting Nova Scotia.
Deborah and Michael McDermott of Oregon previously offered $500 with no questions asked, as long as the pictures they took during their son Eric McDermott’s participation in a bike tour for multiple sclerosis are intact.
Martin Wigginton, manager of Blacks Photography in the Halifax Shopping Centre, said yesterday his employees see people lose irreplaceable pictures all the time, and wanted to help the family.
“I cannot begin to tell you how awesome that is,” Deborah told Metro Halifax yesterday, adding the Multiple Sclerosis Society based in Dartmouth has also offered to accept the laptop and return it back to the McDermotts.
But the laptop is still missing. Halifax Regional Police responded to a theft on Lower Water and Salter streets just before 9 p.m. Friday.
The back window of the McDermott family’s vehicle was smashed out and their laptop, including all pictures of the 38-day coast-to-coast MS bike tour, had disappeared.
Deborah said Canadians have been “incredible” in supporting her son’s cause, adding the police have “gone above and beyond” in helping to find the lost materials.
But she doesn’t plan to return to the Halifax waterfront, the scene of the crime, any time soon.
“There’s just one really rotten person out there,” she said of the theft. “(We’re) heartbroken.”
