A teenage thief in Manitoba apologized and turned himself in to police after the store owner he had robbed added him as a friend on Facebook.

Stefan Tergesen told BuzzFeed Canada he found the thief within a day after enlisting the help of his customers.

Tergesen owns the H.P. Tergesen & Sons gift shop in Gimli, a tourist town about one hour north of Winnipeg.

Tergesen headed to the store after friends called him about a broken window. “I came down and found a smashed window in my shoe department,” he said.

Inside, a display case full of Nixon watches had been smashed and emptied.

Tergesen called the police, then checked his surveillance tapes. They showed a teenage boy running in and grabbing the watches, his face clearly visible.

Tergesen uploaded a brief video of the break-in to the store’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, asking his customers for help finding the thief. It didn’t take long.

Gimli is a small place, with an off-season population of about 5,000 people, Tergesen said. Tergesen said that within hours, a dozen people had all named the same person as the culprit.

“I thought I should go look at his Facebook page to see if he’s posted anything that might incriminate him,” Tergesen said. “It dawned on me that if I sent him a friend request, he was going to know for sure that I knew who he was and that he was done for.”

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