ST. LOUIS – A series of break-ins in the Dogtown and Grove neighborhoods has St. Louis police looking for three suspects, who officers believe hit two restaurants within hours of each other.
Wednesday morning marked an unexpected start to the day for a couple of local restaurants and bars, as employees cleaned up broken glass from overnight burglaries.
According to a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson, thieves smashed the glass on the front door at Stone Turtle Restaurant and Bar in Dogtown and stole a cash register just before 7 a.m.
Shortly after 4 a.m., thieves broke into Platypus in The Grove and stole the register. The front door still hasn’t been fixed since the last break-in, some eight months ago.
“They were here for probably less than a minute; popped in, grabbed a drawer, and ran out,” Tony Saputo, Platypus co-owner, said. “Just three kids in the same thing you see at all the other surveillance videos. Just kids in hoodies running in and running out.”
Saputo said they’d been open until 1 a.m. that morning, and Platypus will be open for regular hours on Thursday.
“I don’t know; I feel this is the cost of doing business in St. Louis, kind of, you know?” Saputo said. “We could easily put bars up on the doors and windows and it not be as warm of a place. But that’s not what we’re trying to do. If I was scared about it, I would have opened this up in St. Charles or Cottleville.”
Anyone with information on either break-in is asked to call the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
