HOUSTON – Thieves targeting two restaurants in the Bellaire area came up with a creative way to avoid being caught on camera.
Around 3 a.m. on Monday, someone cut the power to the small strip mall building along Bissonnet Street near Chimney Rock Road.
“They had to case the building a little bit, you know, where the power was,” said Kerry Pauly, owner of KP’s Kitchen.
That left his security cameras useless.
The crooks tried cracking into a side window, which is actually a facade and leads nowhere.
Then they shattered the front glass door to break inside the restaurant that’s only been open for roughly three months.
“Looks like maybe they use a tire iron to kind of bust that, so they busted this all out,” he said.
Inside they trashed the place while looking for money. Bottles of wine were tossed around, and the chef’s office was left a mess.
“This area back here was like a mess,” Pauly said. “There was like a bottle of wine or something. It was just stuff everywhere.”
They managed to get away with only $300 and a few bottles of tequila.
“They didn’t steal anything expensive tequila. They’re not very sophisticated palates. They went for the cheap tequila,” he said.
KP’s Kitchen wasn’t the only restaurant that was hit.
A few doors down in the strip mall, Saltillo Mexican Kitchen, also fell victim to a similar robbery.
There is a suspect broke in the front door too.
“They really didn’t they take that much,” said General Manager Francisco Cerventes. “You know, we didn’t have any cash money here.”
Instead, the crooks just got away with an empty safe and a $3,500 bottle of champagne.
The interesting part of the story is that the criminals knew to turn off the power to avoid a security system picking up on their thievery.
Detectives with the Houston Police Department’s Property and Financial Crimes Unit is investigating.
KPRC 2′s Gage Goulding asked if things were a trend detectives were seeing. They’re still working on the case and weren’t able to identify any trends at this point.
But to customers dining at KP’s Kitchen, it sounds like whoever did this was a pro.
“No, no, they knew what they were doing. It’s not their first rodeo,” said Esmeralda Clements.
Breaking into a business is considered a felony crime, according to HPD.