Thousands of dollars worth of flat screens stolen caught on

Thieves grabbed some expensive flat-screen televisions at a local store and now that business is offering a reward for their arrest.

The brazen burglars are still on the loose tonight and police are asking for your help. The store owner says he’s surprised it happened.

David Sewart says he has done businesses in Salinas at his local franchise, Aaron’s Sales and Lease, for about a decade now. He says this is the first time he has had to deal with crime like this.

In the store surveillance video, two burglars are seen smashing the front door twice. At Aaron’s sales and lease on north Sanborn in Salinas at four in the morning on Thursday. The duo then went directly toward a stack of Samsung 40-inch smart televisions.

“I’m offering a reward for any information of $5,000 dollars cause I really want to catch them,” said owner David Sewart. Four were stolen, valued at $4,000 dollars. He said they also did about $3,000 dollars in damage to the store. “It goes straight to the bottom line, so you know instead of being able to have a good Christmas party, we’ll just have an okay one; you know because we can’t do a lot of the things we wanted to do.”

Sewart thinks it was a coordinated effort. He says several cars are seen driving away from the shopping center, making for a quick getaway.

Initially the thieves had trouble trying to squeeze all four of the flat screen televisions underneath a bar. Salinas police say unfortunately the city sees a lot of burglaries, especially this time of the year. Even so, store manager Marie Rosiles says customers are still surprised. “They keep asking, what’s going on, if it’s really safe to come to this area. It’s really scary to think they’re just going to come back and do it again.” To keep thieves from coming back, Rosiles says the expensive electronics will be kept in the back of the store and the surveillance cameras will stay in place.