It had to have been greasy, but not enough for a suspected burglar to slide through the vent and into a Cobb County restaurant.
When employees at Los Bravos Mexican Restaurant on Roswell Road arrived for work shortly after 9 a.m. March 13, they found the man dangling above the stove in the kitchen and called police. Security camera video appears to show Mauricio Serrano-Jimenez enter the restaurant around 1:30 a.m.
The video shows first responders pull Serrano-Jimenez from the vent and carry him out of the kitchen, Channel 2 Action News reported. The burglary and the process of freeing the suspect caused about $4,000 of damage to the vent, according to police.
“I see a guy. The guy’s legs are hanging from the hood of the kitchen,” restaurant manager Julio Angel told Channel 2. “I can see from his waist to the bottom. He’s pleading for help and he’s thirsty. He wants water and I’m telling him, ‘Why did you do this?’ On top of the hood, there’s like a little opening. This guy probably thought he was slim enough to come through. He removed a couple of the filters so he could make it through.”
Serrano-Jimenez, of Marietta, previously worked at a different Los Bravos restaurant but was fired in 2015 for stealing, according to an arrest warrant.
Investigators said they believe he was involved in similar crimes at two other restaurants in the area.
“Said accused is missing three fingers on his right hand, a physical detail seen in (security camera) video,” an arrest warrant states.
On March 5, Serrano-Jimenez allegedly entered the Laredos Taqueria & Grill on Cobb Parkway in Kennesaw through a vent. Once inside, he’s accused of stealing three bottles of tequila and about $180 while doing $3,700 in damages, an arrest warrant states.
On Feb. 16, he was caught on video entering a restaurant on Wade Green Road through a grease vent and stealing $800, according to police.
Cobb jail records do not indicate Serrano-Jimenez has been in custody.
“Creative” burglars aren’t new to Cobb. Last year, a suspected serial burglar was indicted on 25 counts after a series of break-ins.
According to various Cobb police agencies, Aron Jermaine Major would crawl into businesses during the overnight hours after removing a windowpane or breaking a window. He kept crawling, hoping not to set off any motion detectors, until he reached cash or alcohol, police said. Then, the “crawling burglar” crawled back out, sometimes replaced the window, and was off to the next business, according to authorities.
Major was indicted on one count of racketeering and 24 counts of second-degree burglary in his alleged crime spree that lasted from September 2020 until his arrest in June 2021, court records show. He remains in the Cobb jail, according to booking records.
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