As an attendant labored in the kitchen late Tuesday, a man walked into a Dunkin’ Donuts shop in Countryside, yanked a cash register and its data cables free from the countertop and ran out $500 richer through a door held open by an accomplice, local police said.
At least one of the men may also have been the one who stole an Oak Park dry cleaners’ cash register at the height of rush hour Wednesday morning, Oak Park police said.
Countryside investigators suspect the same men in as many as seven similar thefts at Dunkin’ Donuts and other small stores in the south and west suburbs and Chicago since Halloween, said Countryside Police Chief Tim Swanson.
“They come in the doors and they actually take the register and rip the register right off the counter and run away with it,” Swanson said.
Countryside police circulated security video footage of the theft to local television stations Wednesday. It shows two men, one minding the door while his partner tugs at the register with gloved hands, said investigator Kreg Floyd.
The worker in the 24-hour doughnut shop, at 5500 S. La Grange Rd., was in the kitchen as the thieves entered, the manager said.
At 8:10 a.m. Wednesday, a man entered Oak River Cleaners, 1112 Chicago Ave., in Oak Park and made off with a register containing about $300, said Ulson Lee, an owner.
Oak Park police Cmdr. Keenan Williams said the suspect, a white man about 20 to 25 years old, 6 feet tall, with a medium build and wearing a dark knit skullcap, dark jacket and blue jeans, fled in a green Ford Expedition that may have had a getaway driver.
Countryside police said both suspects, one described as a lean white man of about 140 pounds, 20 to 25 years old in a hooded shirt, and his accomplice, a black man the same age wearing a hood and with a medium build, also left in a green sport-utility vehicle.
The first of the apparent string of register thefts took place Oct. 31 in Worth, Floyd said. A gas station in Summit and a Dunkin’ Donuts in Brookfield were hit in the last week, Floyd said.
A Calumet Area detective in Chicago said similar thefts have recently occurred in the city, but it is too soon to say whether the same men were involved.
