Nine Central Street businesses hit by smash-and-grab burglaries; police eye a link to Wilmette

A commercial building on Chicago Avenue in Evanston, not one of the businesses affected. Photo: Nick Number, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Smash-and-grab burglars hit nine businesses on Central Street in Evanston at about 4 a.m. Thursday, breaking storefront windows and doors, and police are looking into a possible link to 16 similar break-ins in Wilmette in the same half hour. No one is in custody.

What police say

Officers responded to burglar alarms and broken windows in the 1600 through 1900 blocks of Central Street, the city said in a news release. All nine businesses reported glass damage. Several reported thefts, including cash and a cash register. Detectives are reviewing surveillance footage.

The businesses are Mustard’s Last Stand, The Spot, Preston’s Flowers, Hewn Bakery, Pinto Thai, Bluestone, the Christian Science Reading Room, CustomEyes and The Spice House, according to the Evanston RoundTable, which listed addresses from 1613 to 1941 Central St.

A fast, coordinated hit

Footage from Mustard’s Last Stand shows two masked people climbing through a broken window at 3:54 a.m., taking cash from the register and leaving within 30 seconds, the RoundTable reported. At Hewn, co-owner Ellen King said bakers were inside around 3:57 a.m. when the door was smashed, and the burglars ran without taking anything. She said the cameras showed a car pulling up, three people running to Preston’s across the street, two going to Hewn and the driver staying in the car.

Angela Schaffer, who runs the Central Street business district, told Evanston Now that police patrolled the street while owners boarded up their windows.

The Wilmette link

Wilmette said 16 of its businesses were burglarized or targeted between 3:45 and 4:09 a.m., with cash taken at each one. Police there found a suspicious vehicle in the village center, and when it refused to stop it got onto I-94 from Lake Avenue. A Chicago police helicopter followed it, and several people were seen running away on foot. Officers recovered the vehicle, which the Daily Northwestern reported had been stolen in Oak Forest earlier that morning. No arrests have been made.

Similar tactics were used in September at three downtown Evanston businesses, the RoundTable noted, as well as in recent break-ins in Chicago and Skokie.