A weed shop in Seattle, Washington suffered an overnight crash-and-grab of around $15,000 worth of merchandise, and it’s not the first time in recent memory it’s been robbed.
The burglary is the second time the store, Cannazone Seattle, has been the victim of crime in the past six months. Early Tuesday morning, between the hours of 3 and 4 a.m., a black vehicle smashed into the store’s window, allowing the five suspects to gain access to the store before they took off with the $15,000 worth of items.
The owner, Juliet Jreig, told Seattle’s King 5 that multiple Cannazone locations have been hit recently and she got the call early Tuesday morning.
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“Immediately panic, because it always happens around 3 o’clock,” she said. “It’s between 3:30 and 4 o’clock every time. So when I get a call around that time, I know my store is getting broken into.”
The Seattle Police Department retrieved a record number of guns off the streets in 2023, with 1260 seized as of the beginning of December and 1,349 recovered in the entirety of 2022. (Seattle Police Department)
In October 2023, thieves used a similar tactic to gain entry to the building, slamming a car into the shop’s door. But the suspects weren’t able to gain access and abandoned the car at the scene.
Cannabis retailers are targets for these so-called crash-and-grab burglaries, King 5 reported. A bill that would have added an extra 12 months to a sentence for people convicted of a burglary where a vehicle is used to smash into a business did not pass during the state’s latest legislative session.
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Seattle has been riddled with crime in recent years and other businesses in the city have been the victim of repeated crimes. Some businesses downtown and in the Belltown area reportedly no longer ask officers to respond to crimes because of their frequency.
The Space Needle stands over the Seattle skyline as Mt. Rainier is seen in the background on March 13, 2022 in Seattle, Washington. ((Photo by John Moore/Getty Images))
A Target in downtown Seattle would see shoplifting, oftentimes daily, before many products were put behind locked glass cases. The Seattle Men’s and Women’s Chorus saw four break-ins over four days and a Seattle smoke shop was targeted seven times in just one month.
An anonymous local restaurant owner claimed in February that his business had suffered its 23rd break-in since the beginning of the “defund the police” movement, but faced a slew of negative Yelp reviews after speaking out against the crime crisis in the city.
Fox News Digital reached out to The Seattle Mayor’s Office and the Public Safety Civil Service Commission for comment.
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Fox News’ Nikolas Lanum and Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.
