Smash and grab Car window break-in nets crook $40G cash
A bold Brooklyn crook smashed a car window with a wrench and stole a backpack inside containing $40,000 cash, police said Tuesday.
Startling video released by cops shows the determined robber (inset) stroll up to a parked car in broad daylight on Joralemon St. near Hicks St. in Brooklyn Heights with a four-way cross wrench shortly after 1:30 p.m. on July 11.
He smashed the passenger-side window with the wrench and grabbed the backpack, the video shows.
The owner of the car, who runs a construction business, told cops the bag was loaded with $40,000 cash.
The crook was wearing shorts and a blue hoodie with the hood pulled up and ran off west on Joralemon St.
A noise outside startled a 73-year-old neighbor who was working on her computer in her ground-level apartment. She looked out her window and saw the thief trying the door of a black Jeep parked out front.
“I opened my window and said, ‘What are you doing?’” the witness said.
She watched him take the wrench and smash the passenger side window of the Jeep, sending glass flying. She called 911.
A short time later, the Jeep’s owner saw the witness near his car. His construction company is renovating a building nearby.
“I thought she was sort of waiting there for me, like ‘Hey, move the car,’ kinda like that, because people in Brooklyn can be like that,” said the owner, who did not want to be identified. “My passenger side window was broken and my bag was gone.”
The bag was stashed under the front dashboard, he said.
“I wouldn’t say that there’s anybody who’s an ex-employee who had it in for me, but people see opportunities,” the owner said.
“I feel very strongly that somebody was targeting me,” he said.
In the surveillance video police showed him, the owner saw the thief hide behind a tree to sneak a peek at the building his company is renovating.
The owner’s foreman said police showed them a white Subaru following his boss’s Jeep and circling the block before the break-in. He hopes police will be able to catch the thief based on the pictures of the car.