WARREN, Mich. (WXYZ) — They aren't your usual smash and grabs. Lately, police in metro Detroit are seeing more crash and grabs where crooks use vehicles to ram their way into businesses or to pull out ATMs inside of them out through glass doors.
And Friday morning at 4:54 am it happened in Warren at Joe's General Store on Hoover near East Nine Mile. And just one minute later, at 4:55 am, Detroit Police said it was happening at a check cashing location on Telegraph Road near Seven Mile Road.
It's quite possible the same crew of crooks orchestrated their crimes to take place at the same time so that police were not on heightened alert.
In both cases, the crooks used vehicles to haul the money machines away.
And in the Warren case, things didn't go as smoothly as the crooks planned when they showed up in a stolen red pickup truck.
On surveillance video, two masked men with hoodies on are seen jumping out of the back seat.
One of the men can be seen trying to use a hammer to smash the glass on the front door of the party store as his accomplice grabbed what appeared to be a long and yellow heavy duty strap out of the bed of the truck. One end of the strap had already been tied to the truck's bumper.
One perpetrator goes inside the store with the strap to loop it around the atm.
The men then back away from the entry as a third accomplice, who remained in the driver's seat, hit the gas in hopes of pulling the atm right out through the broken glass and through the front door.
But this time, the strap snapped.
The men jumped back into the pickup truck as if they were going to abort their plan, but then the driver puts the truck in reverse and crashes into the building.
A couple cinder blocks fall into the back of the truck. And this time the men get out and go into the opening created by the crash and push the atm outside.
One of the crooks falls on his rear end during the struggle to push the machine closer to the pickup.
The atm proves to be heavier than they hoped as it falls out of their hands, but they are successful in their second attempt to lift it over the damaged tailgate.
The exhausted criminals then get back into the truck and they take off.
The burglaries are similar to another one Action News reported in September in Highland Park. In that case, the men walked in to a gas station that was still open for business to loop a similar yellow strap around the atm. The other end of the strap was tied to the back of a truck.
And in that case, the crooks were successful on the first attempt to use the truck to pull on the atm and crash it through the glass doors.
Anyone with information on suspects in any of the cases is urged to contact the police department in that jurisdiction.
