Surveillance video shows burglars break into multiple businesses in North Chicago​on April 28, 2025 at 8:49 am

NORTH CHICAGO, Ill. (WLS) — A surveillance camera captured a group of thieves breaking into multiple businesses in a strip mall in the north suburbs.

It was in the early morning hours Friday when surveillance video showed a a light-colored sedan pull into a North Chicago strip mall located along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

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Five people emerged from the vehicle, some with what appeared to be bricks, and broke into three of the businesses there, including a Wingstop, a taco restaurant and a smoke shop.

“Hundreds of dollars worth of products was gone, missing,” Vape Cloud Smoke Shop manager Shade Hicks said. “They took like three, four boxes in the back that was stacked with products.”

Photos taken by the manager of the smoke shop show the brick used by the thieves to break in before they went about trashing the store. It was not just products that were stolen, but cash too.

“It was like $400 of cash, plus the expensive register that was taken,” Hicks said. “They took the whole thing, the whole register.”

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Meanwhile, next door at Speedy Taco, the restaurant owner told ABC7 that the thieves were unable to locate any cash there and retaliated by causing a lot of damage instead. Employees said it wasn’t just the strip mall that was hit, but several other nearby businesses as well.

North Chicago police did not want to confirm any of the details, saying only that the investigation involves multiple municipalities, not just North Chicago.

No further information about the burglaries was immediately available.