BALTIMORE (WBFF) — This weekend, back-to-back burglaries left a Baltimore County shopping center battered and boarded up. More than half a dozen businesses were broken into overnight by a group of masked suspects.
Baltimore County police confirmed that around 3 a.m. on Saturday, January 10, seven businesses were hit at the Belair Beltway Plaza in Nottingham. Several windows were smashed and plywood now covers the damage as store owners are left cleaning up the mess. One store owner, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, shared surveillance video with FOX45 showing four suspects shattering a front window then sprinting inside.
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Dressed in dark clothing with reflective vests, they appear young and move with purpose. They jump the counter and head straight for the cash register. As it’s ripped from the counter, you can see the store’s computer system smashed in the process. The owner told FOX45 $1300 in cash was taken in additional to thousands more in damages, a large loss for a small business.
“Definitely young. But young knows what they are doing,” said Ahmed Shafie, owner of Cookies by Design, “This is very scary.”
Shafie said his store was thankfully spared, but he’s still shaken by the back-to-back break-ins.
“The profit margin with everything else is going sky high. We barely are surviving,” he said. “It should be more worrying to all of us.”
In the three decades he’s been here, he said he’s never seen multiple stores hit in one night.
“We used to see the police at nighttime, because in the cookie business, overnight we stay to bake cookies,” Shafie said. “These robbers, they must know that the police presence is no longer as regular used to be.”
For now, investigators have not released the names of the businesses targeted or confirmed exactly what was stolen, citing the ongoing investigation.
And while police have not confirmed a connection — less than an hour later and less than five miles away, four suspects matching the same description broke into a KFC inside the Parkside Shopping Center.
“Alright, glass at the front of it is broken out,” dispatchers said over police radio. “It’s going to be a confirmed commercial [breaking and entering]. We got some evidence of ransacking and whatnot inside.”
As of the time this article was written, investigators said both cases remained under active investigation and no arrests had been made.
Police asked any business owners with surveillance video or information related to either incident to contact them.
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