WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — Despite a recent devastating burglary, a new family-owned business is moving forward with plans to open its store in Wichita Falls in under one month.

For more than four decades Wheeler Bar Circle W Sales has been a staple in Altus, Oklahoma.

“My wife and I started the business in 1978 and we’ve been in business ever since,” co-owner J.R. Wheeler said.

A few years ago they decided to expand their trailer sales and service and truck accessory business into Wichita Falls.

“In 2021, end of 20, we just finally made the decision to expand and felt like this was the place to expand with all of the customers and stuff that’s asked us to move down this direction that way they didn’t have to travel quite so far and thought it’d be a good opportunity for us and our business as well,” co-owner Justin Wheeler said.

Just last week, a little less than a month before they were hoping to open, they got a call their business had been burglarized and unfortunately, the thieves even took the surveillance recordings.

“Through here, they tore this stuff up here,” Justin said. “The monitor and everything was on this cabinet. They cut all of the cords going to all of the cameras and stole all of the equipment that went to all of the camera systems. They tore up the backdoor, which is how they came in and they stole all of our computers and stuff that we had set up already printers, and of course, just left trash laying everywhere. So, we’ve been trying to clean it up and get computers built back up again to get back rolling.”

That’s not all they took, as they took tires, the heating and air unit and even cleaning supplies and toilet paper.

Police said so far, no arrests have been made, but the investigation continues.

“I don’t know at this time if there are any leads or not,” Justin said. “We are leaving that up to the detectives and haven’t been notified of anything at this time, yet.”

To hopefully prevent anything else from being taken in the future, J.R. said they are increasing security.

“We have more security,” J.R. said. “We also have an individual that drives through here several times during the night and stuff. So, we are adding more security. Our camera system is going to be totally different. It’ll be going to the cloud. There will be a lot of things that we’ll be doing differently.”

As of Monday, February 20, 2023, the Wheelers are still hoping to open their new Wichita Falls location at the beginning of March 2023.

The store is located off Northwest Freeway near the Harley Davidson store.