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Hundreds of Nike and New Balance sneakers were stolen from a Florida shopping mall in the middle of the night this week. The thieves pulled off the burglary, according to the local sheriff, in a heist that appeared to be “right out of Mission Impossible.”
All in all, about $50,000 worth of sneakers were taken by the thieves after they cut a hole in the concrete roof of a Champs Sports at the Treasure Coast Mall in Jensen Beach at some point between midnight and 8 a.m. The thieves lowered themselves through the hole and then lifted around 500 pairs of shoes back through it before making their escape.
“We had a burglary that we discovered yesterday that appears to be right out of Mission Impossible,” Martin County Sheriff John Budensiek said in a press conference. “I watched the national news, saw what happened across the pond where they stole the crown jewels, and this is a one-off of that.”
The Martin County Sheriff’s Department wrote on social media in a statement addressing the heist, “Not quite the Crown Jewels — but it’s clear these sneaker thieves put the same time and effort into their crime. Now it’s our detectives’ turn to track them down… The stolen merchandise was bagged, tagged, thrown off the roof, and loaded into a getaway vehicle.”
A photo of the mall’s roof shows a stack of boxed of some shoes that were left behind by the thieves. Sheriff John Budensiek said he didn’t know why the shoes were left behind, speculating that they either ran out of room, or were spooked off by something or someone.
The sheriff also said the thieves used electric tools – “probably a grinder or saw” — to cut through the roof and “somehow worked for hours without being detected.” He also stated that they didn’t know how the thieves got on to the roof in the first place.
As for why alarms were never triggered, it’s because the only alarms in the store are located at the back door and across the front entrance. A motion sensor camera was triggered, but it was apparently not set up to alert anyone.
“These are organized criminals that are probably traveling criminals that made their way to Martin County, got off with a sizable amount of product,” Budensiek shared. “And we anticipate catching them. I anticipate being back here shortly telling you that we arrested somebody.”