String of Break-Ins at Mystic Restaurants

Thieves broke into six Mystic restaurants early Monday morning and now police are investigating if they could be connected to other incidents in Eastern Connecticut.

Similar break-ins have happened in East Lyme and Coventry in the last two weeks.

The Pita Spot was one of the places that thieves broke into early Monday. The owner says they broke in through a side window, stole two safes and then ran to their car. The whole incident was captured on a surveillance camera across the street.

"Of course you feel so violated," said Vivian Torregrossa, owner of the the Pita Spot. "Really it was just so weird to be here. You could feel the presence of someone."

It's difficult to make out the robbers in the surveillance from a liquor store across the street but you can see their getaway car pull next to the Pita Spot, drop someone off and then several minutes later come back to pick up that person up.

Torregrossa says the crook got in through a side window and made a big footprint on this table.

"They took all the cameras and directed them a different way from where they were going," she said, adding that "they went that way into the office, broke the office door and walked out with 2 safes."

This is one of the six Mystic businesses that thieves hit early Monday morning. Now area police want to know if similar incidents here are connected to a break in at an East Lyme tavern last month

"So their first attempt was at our front door right here and they tried several ways to get it open…it’s a pretty solid door," said Rachel Lenda of S&P Oyster Company, where thieves tried not once, not twice but three times to break in. "You can see right here there's a little notch from where the device they used to pop open a door, once they got into the building the alarm immediately went off."

The thieves ran but now businesses are hoping you can help find the crooks captured on surveillance.

"For a small business that's a lot of money but the important thing for us is that no one got hurt," said Torregrossa.

Detectives are now working to see if these cases on the shoreline are connected to another burglary 45 miles north in Coventry.

Meantime investigators are telling business owners to keep their eyes and ears open
 

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