Taryn Stephenson and her mother own a tea shop in Maple Ridge called T's Once Upon a Tea Leaf. The incident happened at 2:30 a.m. on Sept. 21 and left the entire business covered in an orange film.
On her way to see the damage, she pulled up the video surveillance to see a man throwing an object through the window of her business. Not only was the merchandise in the store ruined from the ‘marine’ pyrotechnic device, but the front window was shattered. She estimates $100,000 to $200,000 worth of stock has been destroyed and cannot be sold. “This was designed to send a message to scare us,” she says. “We have my grandmother's chandelier that we used to have Christmas dinner under that the sun shines a light on our store, we have my great grandmother's banquet,” she says.
“As for the next steps right now, we are in a holding pattern,” she says. "We're just waiting. We're waiting for insurance to figure things out."