WOODRIDGE, Ill. (WLS) — Multiple businesses were targeted by burglars in the southwest suburbs, police said Sunday.
It was a frustrating day for many of the small businesses. At least ten different shops were hit overnight between Woodridge and Downers Grove.
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Many of the businesses are now dealing with missing cash registers and costly repairs to the storefronts.
“Today is very frustrating, because it’s the weekend,” said Ryan Yu, owner of New Chinese Kitchen.
The typical busy rush for businesses on a Sunday was hindered by the brazen overnight burglaries that happened across the southwest suburbs.
A small business like us, you know, a mom and pop, I mean it’s just adding up more expenses
Shabbir Amiraly, FMB Grocery Store owner
Surveillance video caught the moment a group of offenders smashed their way through a Michoacana ice cream shop. The video showed them run in and out of the store, coming away with cash from the register before doing the same thing just a couple of doors down in a strip mall off of Woodward Avenue in Downers Grove.
It’s a concerning trend that police have been warning about in recent weeks, and more of the same happened overnight just down the road in Woodridge.
“We got a call front ADT at 5:30 saying there’s an alarm thing happening, and we thought it was a false alarm,” said Shabbir Amiraly, owner of FMB Grocery Store.
Amiraly and his wife arrived to their grocery shop Sunday morning to find shattered glass and missing money.
“We’ve been here nine plus years, and we’ve never had this issue, so I don’t know, it’s very surprising actually,” Amiraly said.
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Yu’s Chinese restaurant next door was also burglarized, with hundreds of dollars stolen, and it was also a huge hit to their operations Sunday as their order taking system was broken too.
“Taking orders is very hard,” Yu said. “We cannot print tickets. We have to take phones and write down back to the basics and stuff, so it’s very hard.”
The 10 businesses hit by the overnight burglaries added to a lengthy list of smash-and-grab burglaries that happened just a few weeks ago in Mokena and Tinley Park.
“The hassle, the broken glass, we have to fix that, and we have to deal with insurance,” Yu said. “We have to deal with a lot of stuff.”
The small business owners said they’re running out of ideas to protect their shops.
“A small business like us, you know, a mom and pop, I mean it’s just adding up more expenses,” Amiraly said.
No one has been arrested and police continue to investigate to see if all of the burglaries are connected to the same suspects.
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