A business owner who opened in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Los Angeles only a few months ago was too distraught to speak on camera after smash-and-grab burglars bashed their way into his shoe store for the second time in a month.
Surveillance video recorded around 2:30 a.m. Friday shows three vehicles pull into the parking lot of Rich LA off the intersection of Century Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue.
Five or six suspects in masks and hoodies exit the vehicles and head to the front entrance where they proceed to pry open the security gate and smash open the glass doors.
The thieves are then seen carrying clothing and shoe boxes out of the store.
Mohammad Ghalev, the store’s owner, estimated tens of thousands of dollars in merchandise was taken along with $20,000 in cash and a handgun kept at the store for safety.
Ghalev, who spoke with KTLA’s Ellina Abovian after his store was burglarized just weeks ago on July 11, said he was too upset to be interviewed on Friday.
During the July 11 incident, surveillance video showed roughly 10 suspects burglarizing the store after using a suspected stolen vehicle to ram into the security gate.
“We didn’t really expect something like this will happen like this,” Ghalev said at the time. “It was really bad. It was really sad.”
He said the suspects got away with about $25,000 in merchandise in that burglary.
Ghalev was at the store Friday morning to once again clean up the damage from a smash-and-grab burglary and figure out what to do next.
