Sima Amin has been serving up chicken to Santa Clarita Valley residents for 10 years, but the brazen smash-and-grab break-in and theft at her Newhall restaurant early Friday morning prompted her to speak out.
“I want something done. I want these guys caught,” the manager of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen on Lyons Avenue said Friday after deputies with the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station had taken a report of the incident
The breakin happened about 3 a.m. Friday, according to the video surveillance system that recorded it.
Two young thieves, seen on the video footage, appeared to be in their early 20’s.
“They seemed to know exactly what they’re doing,” Amin said. “They broke the (store front) glass in just the right place, in the corner, and it all shattered.”
The thieves stole the restaurant safe and two case drawers, she said.
Amin is optimistic the thieves will be caught since both suspects appeared identifiable on surveillance camera. On Friday, she gave SCV sheriff’s detectives copies of the incident.
When the burglars left Popeyes, they went next door and did the same thing at the Baskin-Robbins, smashing the glass and getting into the ice cream shop.
“They went for chicken first and came here for dessert,” said Baskin-Robbins Manager Izzy Manzoor. “They broke into both places.”
Less than a month after the ice cream shop reopened after nine months of renovation, Manzoor now has to repair the storefront glass.
“I feel like I have to shower after this,” Manzoor said, trying to describe a feeling of having been violated by the break-in.
Like his neighbors, he plans on giving SCV sheriff’s detectives a copy of the video surveillance that captured images of the burglars at work.
“We’re going to give it the sheriff’s detectives,” Izzy said.
And, like his chicken-serving neighbor, he said he wants something done about the overnight smash-and-grab burglaries happening in Newhall.
“We don’t want other people to experience this,” he said.
