A boba tea shop in Larchmont Village was broken into early Sunday morning, and the suspect remains on the loose.
According to the LAPD, officers received a call shortly before 11 a.m. regarding a burglary that occurred in the 100 block of Larchmont Boulevard.
The owner of the shop said the break-in had occurred around 10 hours previously – around 1 a.m. Sunday morning – and that it was the second break-in he’s endured in the past few months.
“I think it’s the city. The city is not strict enough on a lot of these people who are trying to make a quick buck,” James Kim, owner of Boba the Great, told KTLA. “So, imagine if the laws were stricter people would think twice…we work so hard to get these places going and we’re just getting out of the pandemic too and that’s been a real challenge of its own and for things like this to happen, it’s not good, but we’re keeping our head up high. Every time something like this happens, we adjust to make sure that we protect ourselves better.”
Video shows the suspect enter the store through the back entrance and proceed towards the front of the store through the kitchen.
Once in the front, the thief begins to ransack the area surrounding the cash register, before grabbing what appears to be several electronic devices and running out of the store through the back door.
Just down the street, the clothing store Buck Mason has also faced numerous break-ins.
“Every couple of weeks, we hear something that happened on the block and especially when you’re closing alone, it can be kind of scary to know that there’s a lot of burglaries happening,” Buck Mason stylist Nathan Adorney told KTLA. “I’ve worked in several areas of L.A. and this is actually the most I’ve ever seen burglaries happen, over here.”
Investigators with the Los Angeles Police Department are handling the investigation.
