Early Thursday morning, a crew of six to seven people swept through Wilmette and Evanston, smashing glass storefronts and grabbing cash registers from 25 businesses in barely half an hour. The first wave hit around 3:45 a.m. along Skokie Boulevard and at the Wilmette Village Center, where nine and seven locations were targeted respectively.
Surveillance cameras at Pit & Tap Restaurant on Wilmette Avenue captured the operation. Footage shows the group arriving by vehicle, splitting up, and moving quickly from one shop to the next. Inside the restaurant, they shattered the front window, seized two cash registers and several tablets, and were gone in roughly 90 seconds.
Business owners say the property damage far exceeds what was stolen.
Several storefronts face repair bills running into thousands of dollars, forcing some to close temporarily while broken windows and doors are fixed. Minutes after the Wilmette hits, nine more businesses on Evanston’s Central Street reported similar break-ins or attempted entries.
Wilmette police spotted a suspicious vehicle leaving the area and gave chase, but it sped onto I-94. A Chicago police helicopter tracked the car until the occupants bailed out and fled on foot in Oak Forest. The vehicle turned out to have been reported stolen from that same suburb.
Investigators are now working to confirm whether a single crew carried out both suburban sprees. They’re sharing camera footage with neighboring departments and checking for similar patterns reported elsewhere. As of Friday, no arrests have been made.
