In all, Northeast Detectives say, five businesses, four of them restaurants, were hit by brash burglars who broke in by smashing, or trying to smash, front doors overnight Saturday.
Glen Gross just opened Fat Jack's Barbecue on the Boulevard at Red Lion in April. Sunday morning, he arrived to find the front door shattered, and the registers pried open.
"We don't keep a lot of cash in the store, which is fortunate for us. We put money in the safe and we make our deposits every night," said the restaurant's owner Glen Gross.
The thieves got away with less than $80, but caused hundreds in damage.
"It's more a nuisance," said Glen Gross. "If somebody needed the little bit of money that we have, all they had to do was come and ask me, I would have given it to them. It's more of a nuisance than anything else."
At the Red Lion Shopping Center in the next block, two restaurants were hit.
The glass door at Happy Garden Chinese restaurant was cracked, but it didn't shatter. Angela's Pizza next door didn't fare so well.
It appeared the would-be thieves succeeded in breaking in, but left before getting to the register. It was the second time the restaurant has been hit.
"About 7 or 8 months ago," said Salvatore Finazzo. "The last time they stole the register, they stole some money from the register too."
Fewer than four miles away, at the Acme Shopping Center in the 8200 block of Roosevelt Boulevard, two more break-ins with a similar "m.o."
At Adams Fabricare, the glass door was shattered sometime after 5:00am. It was replaced with a door that had come from a restaurant.
Two doors away, at Big Al's Italiano, the door was shattered and the register pried open. It was the third time Big Al's had been burglarized in about two years.
"It's a couple of cents, that's all they get it cost more to fix the register and replace the door than it does the $10 in change, if that much, that they got," said Jake Applebaum.
At least one of the businesses and two of the strip malls that were hit have security cameras. Northeast Detectives are hoping they can access the tapes from those cameras to help them find a suspect.
Police believe that the same suspect is responsible for all five incidents.
