Driver Rams Bucktown Garages, Hoping To Burglarize Them
(CBS) -- Some residents along a Bucktown alley woke up Friday to find their garages had been battered -- an apparent attempt by a driver to get inside and burglarize the structures.
Gary Stern watched as workmen removed his garage door.
It had to be replaced because it was destroyed Thursday night by criminals trying to knock it down with a van to get inside.
The creative crime was captured on tape.
Jack Needham didn't hear anything, but his security camera picked up a maroon minivan slamming into his garage, then backing up.
"There's obviously not enough gap for them to run in, so they just blow me off and go into my neighbor's," he told CBS 2's Dorothy Tucker as they reviewed the video.
The suspects went to the next neighbor and the next one, all up and down the alley behind the 2000 block of Cortland. Garage doors are damaged or were destroyed and are now being replaced.
"They were playing eenie, meenie, minie, moe, going to one garage, skipping a garage, going to the next one and so on," repairman Daniel Ramirez said.
Police believe the aim was to knock the garage doors off their tracks and try to create enough space to slip inside.
"We were talking to cops. They thought maybe it was a team deal where the guy driving the car bashes in the garage doors and somebody behind goes inside the garages and grabs whatever's worth grabbing," Needham said.
Police say suspects burglarized at least three garages. They couldn't capture the license plate.
