A thief stole $100,000 worth of merchandise after breaking into an Adams Morgan jewelry and liquor store through a tunnel in the wall.
The robbery occurred between closing time and 2 a.m. It took the perpetrator about three hours to break into the store. During this time, neighbors reported hearing banging noises.
The suspect broke into an abandoned restaurant building that was undergoing renovations. He took leftover tools from the building and could have potentially used some of them to dig a tunnel through the 2- to 3-foot-thick bricks between the two buildings.
“This is something very special,” said the shop owner. “I opened the shop at 10 a.m. and there were the boxes downstairs.”
The owner said no inventory had been taken of the store, but estimated that about $100,000 worth of gold and watches had been stolen.
This is not the first break-in attempt. According to the owner, there was already an attempted break-in through the rear wall a few weeks ago.
“You can’t survive something like this when you’ve just removed all the inventory,” said the owner. “You’ve just been here for over 30 years and then something like this happens. That’s all.”
