More than $10,000 worth of recording equipment and priceless songs were stolen from the Harambee Center, home to youth organization Cry Out!, on Tuesday.

Celestine Ezinkwo, executive director of Cry Out!, discovered the theft Wednesday afternoon.

Surveillance equipment revealed the crime occurred at about 11:26 p.m. Tuesday, when two men approached the building and one entered while the other stood lookout. The alarm did not go off, Ezinkwo said, because one of his friends was rehearsing elsewhere in the building.

The studio is located in a lower section of the building; Ezinkwo believes the suspect used a chair to break the studio door and steal the equipment.

Ezinkwo has reviewed the security tapes and said he might recognize one of the suspects, but he isn’t sure yet.

“If it’s a kid in my program, I’ll be heart-broken just because that’s the worst that could happen,” he said Thursday afternoon. A theft by one of his program participants would be hard to deal with because of the kind of environment he has tried to create at Cry Out!, he said.

The center is an escape for youth into the visual and performing arts as well as an after-school hangout. Cry Out! hosts about 30 to 40 teens in its programs currently.

The suspects could just as easily be people in the community, Ezinkwo said, because he has heard of a lot about recent thefts.

Police are investigating the crime and stopped by to pick up evidence with fingerprints Ezinkwo collected on Thursday.