Burglars hit Runway Playa Vista shopping center overnight, ransacking several shops, including Hopdoddy Burger Bar, SOL Mexican Cocina and N’ice Cream.
Video of the break-in at N’ice Cream shows two people slipping into the front door after busting through the glass.
The suspects, both wearing hoodies and face masks, were drilling into the shop’s safe within minutes. They also rifled through the counter before slipping out of the ice cream store undetected.
“I’m trying to open up as usual, I see that the glass here was actually popped open,” Jose Cruz Santiago, who manages N’ice Cream, told KTLA’s Jennifer McGraw. “I check around and see that everything is trashed, on the floor and they got into the safe.”
Santiago reported the burglary Thursday morning and then learned that several other businesses had also been burglarized.
“They had their window smashed and they had everything ransacked through too,” Santiago said. “It’s a nice little neighborhood, you know. You just wouldn’t expect this.”
The burglary suspects got away with about $4,000 from the safe and the register at N’ice Cream, a loss that Santiago said may not seem like much but is a major loss for a business already hurting.
“It’s pretty disgusting because we are a small business, you know. We’re not one of those big chains, like Starbucks or something, where especially during Christmas time, we’re really slow. We’re an ice cream store. We’re just really slow, so they’re taking all of that. It’s just really sad,” he said.
These types of burglaries continue to happen all over the southland and business owners are fed up. They hope by sharing footage of the break-ins, it will eventually lead to arrests.
“We’re trying to provide for these people here and make them happy. It’s called N’ice Cream. So, we want people to be happy and then we have this. It just makes us sad,” Santiago said.
