Caught on camera: Thieves break into restaurant fridge in Stanley Marketplace

AURORA, Colo. (KDVR) — An Aurora restaurant needs help identifying the suspects caught on camera that the owner believes have been breaking into their store repeatedly for months now.

Tucked inside Aurora’s Stanley Marketplace is Annette, a restaurant Caroline Glover opened more than seven years ago, fulfilling a long-time dream.

“I fell in love with food when I was probably 17 or 18,” said Caroline Glover, owner of Annette.

The restaurant has thrived. About two months ago, however, food started to disappear.

“We kind of just thought we were going crazy,” said Glover. “Thinking, like, ‘Oh, I could’ve sworn we had one more package of steak,’ or ‘didn’t we have two gallons of milk in there?’”

Glover decided to put up security cameras and on Thursday, they caught the thieves in action.

“It just made me sick to my stomach,” said Glover.

The video shows a group of four people — three breaking into the fridge and one appearing to be on the lookout. A closer look shows how they were covering their tracks.

“It looks like they were undoing the screws, basically lifting the lock off but then putting it back, so it just was, wasn’t something we were catching every single time,” said Glover.

Taken were several cases of expensive steak, along with just about anything else they could get their hands on.

“Chickens, tenderloins, oysters, shrimp,” said Glover.

She estimates about $8,000 worth of food was taken in this one trip and more than $10,000 in total over the last couple of months.

Her lifelong food industry dream, walking right out of the fridge.

“Seeing that was just one of the most invasive things I’ve ever seen, honestly,” said Glover. “It was really hard to watch.”

After alerting the Aurora Police, Glover now hopes the public can help identify who’s responsible so she can get back to what she cares about.

“At the end of the day, we’re putting out good food and that’s what we want to focus on, and now it’s insurance claims and the police department and beefing up security and adding extra padlocks,” she said.

Glover posted the video on Instagram and said since then, community support has flooded in so she is thankful for that. She hopes shining a light on incidents like this will help stop them from happening to others in the restaurant community.

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