Backing a car into a store door to steal thousands of dollars of cigarettes.
Police are investigating a couple of very similar burglaries that played out like this in Litchfield County.
“I came down here and found a disaster basically,” said Mark Greenberg, the owner of the Village Market in Goshen.
The store shared their surveillance video of the incident with NBC Connecticut and Connecticut State Police, who say the thieves quickly carried out cartons of cigarettes early Wednesday morning.
Greenberg says the stolen smokes cost about $2,000, and that very visible cash was left behind.
“Not an intelligent bunch of thieves. And, one of the thieves didn’t even want to wear a belt, so it was a little ugly watching him take all my cigarettes.”
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About 15 miles away, clean up continues at Smoker’s Mart in Thomaston after a very similar incident early Thursday morning.
Thomaston Police say an SUV backed into the door of the store, smashing it.
Three men got out of the vehicle and stole cartons of cigarettes.
The store also shared their surveillance video with NBC Connecticut and police.
“Break everything, take all cigarettes, almost $10,000 worth of cigarettes,” said employee Mohammed Kabil.
A Thomaston police detective says this may be related to another incident in Morris and they’re investigating if it’s connected to the Village Market too.
“It hurts of course on top of 2020, and all of the other events that we have to deal with. It’s quite aggravating, but you deal with it. You move on,” said Greenberg.
But he says it’s their loyal customers that keep them moving forward.
“We just keep on going. We hope that we catch these people and hope that the next convenience store is spared what I had to go through last night, two nights ago.”
Investigations into the incidents continue.
