EARTH CITY, Mo. – Mass car break-ins have been plaguing the St. Louis region on both sides of the river.
A UPS facility on Rider Trail North is among the parking areas that have been hit by thieves recently.
St. Louis County police said the crime pattern is as follows, four or five thieves in a single-car roll into a parking lot overnight. Then they hit 30, 40 even 50 cars in a matter of minutes, get what they can and, take off.
FOX 2’s Bommarito Automotive Group SkyFOX was over a shipping company lot in St. Louis City on Barton Street that got hit on Friday. Investigators said the thieves are targeting businesses with large numbers of overnight workers including UPS, FedEx, and Amazon. Some of the items the thieves take are firearms, cash, credit cards, and jewelry.
Mass break-ins have also been reported in St. Peters and Fenton on the Missouri side of the river. Metro East break-ins have been reported in Sauget and Pontoon Beach.
Investigators said they know there are groups doing these mass break-ins, but at this point, they don’t know if the groups are connected.
“You come to work to earn an honest living and you gotta wind up paying two, three hundred bucks to get your window fixed, you know. So it’s just getting out of hand, it really is getting crazy,” said UPS worker Kenny Sims.
Officer Adrian Washington, a spokesperson for the St. Louis County Police Department, told FOX 2, “The groups will jump out and within 6 minutes they’re gone from the scene. As of today November 9th, we have had a total, in central county alone, of 164 vehicles broken into. Out of that number, 5 firearms were stolen out of those vehicles.”
Police are trying to look for surveillance video to help possibly identify suspects. They are also warning people to either take everything from their car with them into work or leave it at home, especially firearms
