ATM thieves smash vehicle through front of SW Atlanta store
ATM thieves drove a van through the front of a southwest Atlanta convenience store before daybreak Thursday to get to the cash machine.
The smash-and-grab burglary happened about 5:30 a.m. at a Chevron gas station and convenience store in the 500 block of Northside Drive near I-20, according to Atlanta police dispatchers.
The front doors and facade of the store were heavily damaged in the burglary.
A short time later, two vans that police said were involved in the heist were found abandoned but still running along I-20 near Hamilton E. Holmes Drive. The stolen ATM was inside one of the vans, police spokeswoman Kim Jones said.
Latif Seidu was the overnight clerk on duty at the store when the burglary occurred, and was inside the cashier’s “cage,” helping a customer, when the thieves drove into the building.
“They reversed and hit the ATM,” he said. “I thought somebody was drunk.”
He said that when the first impact failed to dislodge the cash machine, “they backed into it a second time.”
Seidu said the burglary crew was made up of about eight masked men. At least one suspect was armed with a handgun, witnesses told police.
Seidu told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he believes a couple of the suspects came in late Wednesday night to case the store.
“I became suspicious,” Seidu said. “I came out of the cage and told them, I’m sorry, I don’t need you in my store, get out.”
One week ago a group of thieves crashed a van into a state Department of Motor Vehicles office in East Point and stole two ATMs.
Those thieves fled in a second van, which was later found ablaze in southeast Atlanta.
