Thief breaks through wall of gaming store, steals over $200K in merchandise
An overnight heist left a Minnesota gaming store hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hole, and now the owners are asking the community for help finding the culprit.
It happened last week at Punch-Out Gaming in Forest Lake, located at 828 Lake St South. According to a post on the store's Facebook page, the thief broke into the shop next door and then "cut holes through our wall" to gain access:
The suspect took cash "and over 200k worth of product," but not before being caught on the store's surveillance camera.
It shows the thief crawling through the hole he'd made, and attempting to disable the security camera once he notices it:
In an interview with WCCO, owner Eric Johnson said the man took "all of our stock that we have... I hope we get it back, I’d rather have that than the insurance money because I can’t find product and if I have my product back I can continue to have business and the customers coming in and supporting us.”
Meanwhile, FOX 9 reports that the thief made off with a treasure trove of Pokémon items, saying that he "emptied out two entire storage rooms full" of the stuff in a space of about two hours, "but never opened the door that would have tripped the store's alarm system."
"He must have had help because there were a lot of boxes," Johnson told the station.
Bring Me The News has reached out to the Forest Lake Police Department for comment.
