‘Very organized’ thieves take $100,000 worth of dispensary product

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — Around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 19, security camera footage from Herb Depot in Independence showed two people breaking through the glass door and over the security gate.

The thieves would only be in the store for around five minutes, but they’d leave with around $100,000 in products.

“What do you do?” asked Herb Depot owner Reed Smith.

“Five minutes is nothing. The cops can’t even show up in 5 minutes. There’s no way.”

He says that he didn’t find out that his store had been robbed until he woke up on Saturday morning.

“They smashed my gate, they broke my door, glass all over the place,” said Smith.

“I checked my phone, saw that I had a motion sensor alarm go off. I looked at it, freaked out in my bed like it was over, you know, I got robbed!”

Smith said that the thieves were driving a Ford F-150 King Ranch Edition pickup.

“It was a 2-man team, with a driver and they were very organized,” Smith said.

The team also tried to enter the back door, where the door handles had been ripped off and a crowbar had opened a gap between the door and the frame.

“You just don’t think it’s going to happen to you and then it does,” Smith explained.

The safe that Herb Depot uses to store merchandise securely was left open on Friday night.

“Step one, close the safe when you leave. I’ll take responsibility for that one,” Smith said. “I learned my lesson for sure. If they’re going to come back, at least the safe is going to be closed.”

Smith says that he hopes his insurance company will cover some of the cost. However, he thinks it will be a fraction of what was stolen and the impact will be detrimental.

“It’s going to hurt my business, it’s going to slow everything down, it’s going to give an image to this area as well,” he said.

“I would say, ‘Man you got really good stuff. Enjoy it. Enjoy It. Cause hopefully justice gets served.’”

FOX4 asked the Independence Police Department for their report on the burglary, however, they did not respond in time.

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