Shoplifter smashes out windows of Minneapolis grocery store
MINNEAPOLIS -- A Minneapolis business owner is dealing with thousands of dollars in damage after a man took a metal pole to his store windows.
Security cameras were rolling when it happened Friday night near West 27th Street and Nicollet Avenue.
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"We all thought it was a shooting, so everybody was covering," said Daniel Hernandez, owner of the Colonial Market grocery store. "They already know what to do. That's not normal."
Hernandez says the man who smashed six of his windows was a shoplifter who had been kicked out 15 minutes earlier. Now, after a $3,000 repair bill, Hernandez feels out of options.
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"It's crazy," he said. "It's out of control, I don't know what to do, I mean, and there's no real help."
Hernandez laid off two of his employees in order to be able to afford to replace the windows. As for his remaining employees, he says they're traumatized, and he's been coming in at the end of night shifts to escort them to their vehicles.
On his phone, Hernandez has several pictures and videos of other brazen crimes caught on his security cameras in the last year. His windows were also smashed in the spring, and two people broke in last fall.
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"I can close early, right? And it sounds like a good thing to do," Hernandez said. "The thing is my employees are going to get short hours. It's really hard, man. It's really, it's almost impossible. It's unfathomable. I don't know, there is no word to describe how helpless I feel."
Hernandez says his Eat Street neighbors are going through similar difficulties with crime and claims some longtime businesses have even considered closing for good.