Thieves hit 7 Orange County businesses in one night

Surveillance video shows thieves rummage through one of seven Irvine businesses that were broken into early this week, leaving owners and employees to clean up the mess.

Shattered front doors, glass strewn across the pavement is what workers found when they showed up to work Monday morning at the Sand Canyon Plaza Shopping Center near the corner of Sand Canyon Avenue and Irvine Center Drive.

A total of seven businesses had their front doors or windows smashed in by burglars who quickly ransacked each establishment, looking for things to steal. Surveillance footage from the Domino’s Pizza shows the thieves barely spending any time in the store.

“I want to say like a good 30 seconds,” Domino’s employee Adonis Manrique said of how long the burglars were in the restaurant. “It was really fast, just came in and out because they couldn’t find anything. All we had was $1 bills and that’s all they took, like $30.”

Video from a ramen restaurant a few doors down shows one of the crooks crawling through the bottom of the shattered front door.

“They took a store iPod and one of my employee’s Apple AirPods. They didn’t get any money, nothing too crazy, but they did leave a whole mess for us to clean up,” Braxton Word, owner of HiroNori Craft Ramen, told KTLA.

The break ins occurred between 3:30 a.m. and 4 a.m. Irvine police believe at least three people were involved and said the car they were driving may have been a white, older model BMW SUV, possibly an X3 or X5. No description of the suspects was provided.

It’s unclear just how much money the thieves made off with, but the businesses are now stuck with the cost of repairs to the stores.

Anyone with information about the burglaries is urged to contact the Irvine Police Department.