A hobby store in Rochelle Park, New Jersey, is at the centre of an investigation after an overnight smash-and-grab in which thieves made off with thousands of dollars of Pokemon merchandise, News 12 reported in an exclusive. The break-in left the popular shop strewn with shattered glass and facing a long cleanup, with the entire raid captured on the store's own surveillance cameras.
The store, Big Pack Hobby Shop, is a well-known destination for Pokemon collectors, and its owner was inside clearing up the damage when News 12 arrived. He shared surveillance footage of the entire robbery, video that runs only about a minute and 45 seconds from start to finish, a clip that underlines just how quickly the intruders were able to move through the shop and get away.
According to the owner, the thieves smashed the front door, lifted up the glass and then crawled through the opening to get inside the store. The timing made the break-in all the more bitter, as it came just a day after the business had celebrated its three-year anniversary, a milestone that has now been overshadowed by the theft and the damage left behind.
Inside, the aftermath was stark, with glass scattered across the shop floor. The owner was still working to take a full inventory of everything that had been taken, but estimated that at least 30,000 to 40,000 dollars worth of merchandise had been stolen. He said that figure was still climbing as he continued to sort through the shelves and assess the full scale of the losses.
The owner said he had been woken by an alert on his phone warning that the front glass was being tampered with, at around three o'clock in the morning. From home, he watched on his phone as three masked people moved through the store and went straight for the high-end shelves, deliberately targeting the most valuable stock rather than grabbing items at random.
Adding to the ordeal, his wife and their two-month-old baby were at home with him as the break-in played out on his screen in real time. Rather than wait, he rushed out to the store himself and called police, arriving to find the shop ransacked and the thieves already gone, having vanished into the early morning before officers could reach the scene.
Rochelle Park police said they were investigating the break-in at the hobby shop. For the owner, the focus now turns to clearing up the wreckage, tallying the full extent of his losses and getting the business back on its feet, as a store that had only just marked three years in the community counts the cost of a theft that unfolded in under two minutes while the neighbourhood slept.