The owner of the D-town Burger Bar has been operating without a front door for almost a week now after someone smashed their way inside and stole cash and his peace of mind. The owner says he has been sleeping there just to protect his business. Jonathan Gonzalez reports for the NBC4 News at 5 p.m. on May 6, 2022.
The owner of the D-Town Burger Bar has been operating without a front door for almost a week now after someone smashed their way inside and stole cash and his peace of mind.
Now he's been sleeping here overnight just to protect his business.
“A guy came in in the middle of the night and he broke the door, he broke the door and came in and stole the register,” said Pedro Mojarro, owner of D-Town Burger Bar.
Mojarro's restaurant was burglarized in under a minute just after midnight Monday morning.
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Mojarro told the LAPD there was $1,500 inside that cash register.
Meanwhile, the custom glass front door will cost thousands more to replace.
“The first day, I covered it with the wood and I went home two hours later a guy tried to come in,” Mojarro said.
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Since then, it's been business as usual for Mojarro during the day.
What's unusual is that he's been spending the night here as he waits for the glass door to be replaced.
“We are staying here or I'm paying someone else to stay all night, we cover with that little wood over there and just stay here all night,” Mojarro said.
The NBC4 I-Team analyzed burglaries within a four-block radius of the D-town BurgerBar and found only three reported burglaries since the beginning of the year, including one that took place the same morning just one block away 10 minutes beforehand.
Neighboring business owners say property crime is so rampant sometimes they don't even bother calling police.
“Every day I have problems,” said Claudia Wallace, who owns a market a few stores down from Mojarro.
“The business, you look in many stores are closed. What is the problem? Because they come to stole every day," Wallace said.
Mojarro says he normally locks the day's profits away in a safe, but the burglary happened after they closed on Sunday, his only day off the week.
Now he just wishes more could be done to curb the crime.
“It's frustrating too, you know, because we work for something just so people can come and take it for free always,” Mojarro said.
