Murfreesboro store owner says business is affected after car rammed into store, $40K worth of phones stolen

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WSMV) – New video showed the moment thieves rammed a stolen car into a cell phone store and made off with $40,000 worth of items.

The store had just been stocked up for the holidays when the theft happened.

A boarded-up wall was all a cell phone store owner said he was left with after a group of people drove into this store in Murfreesboro and stole dozens of phones.

Surveillance video showed someone ramming a stolen car into the SD CellPlus store along Memorial Boulevard on November 17.

The owner of the store, who goes by the name Delo, said he still couldn’t believe what happened.

“My pride and joy that I’ve been building for years, smashed to almost pieces,” Delo said.

Store surveillance cameras caught the whole event on video, with the indoor cameras showing the car crashing into the front of the building and cameras outside showing three people jumping out of the car.

“Late at night at around 2 a.m., I got a message in my phone on my alarm system saying that there’s been a trigger in the alarm,” Delo said.

When he looked though his camera system, Delo said he saw the three people run straight to his store display case filled with dozens of iPhones. The group first tried to break the display glass before switching to take off the display back board, grabbing every iPhone they could before driving off.

“You don’t think these things will happen to you, but it does, and it’s sad that it does. It’s Christmas time, it’s Thanksgiving, people are buying gifts, so these are usually my busiest months, November and December, so with us being closed, it’s been pretty though,” Delo said.

While Murfreesboro Police work to track down the people who damaged his store, Delo said he lost even more money in the days following the break-in.

“Customers think that we’re closed, or we’ve moved, just a loss of business.” Delo said. “I’m hoping they do get caught. I actually had a friend today, same scenario, rammed in with a car and got into their building, it’s a thing that’s going around.”

Murfreesboro Police were investigating at least two car-crash break-in cases at the time WSMV asked them for answers. Police said they didn’t have evidence to suggest a connection between break-in at Delo’s store and a 7-Eleven break-in on South Church Street days before, but they aren’t ruling anything out.

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