ELYRIA, Ohio — Elyria police are looking for suspects that tried to rob a Lorain County cell phone store four times in the last six weeks. Two of the attempts were successful, with the owner of the store telling 3News the thieves made away with thousands of dollars in merchandise.
Elate Mustafa owns a Metro by T-Mobile store on Abbe Road North. He also owns the vape shop, Puff and Roll, right next door to that.
On Jan. 26, Mustafa said he was woken up in the middle of the night by alerts that the glass front doors to both stores had shattered.
By the time he and police got there, vapes, cell phones and cash were stolen.
A month later on Feb. 23, his cell phone shop was burglarized again, with the thieves getting away with iPhones, Samsung Galaxy smartphones, and money.
Mustafa said two more burglary attempts were made on the cell phone store on Feb. 24 and Feb. 26, but the thieves did not get inside.
The business owner said he now lives in a state of fear and anxiety.
"To be honest, every day, any time my alarm goes off between the middle of the night and the morning, it's just by default my anxiety just kicks in," Mustafa said. "If there's a motion on the camera, you get anxious. You just freeze up. You're just like, oh crap, what's going on now? What's next? It really just puts a bad feeling in your heart, a bad feeling in your mind. It makes you restless and things like that. So, you just don't know how to react at that time. It's not something you want to get used to."
Mustafa said he has lost more than $20,000 from the thefts.
"And not just that, even the repairs to the doors, the repairs to the glass and all that stuff like that becomes pricey," he explained further. "When that happens, it's just your insurance rates go up, and you're just dishing out more than you make.”
He has since heavily upgraded security at his stores.
"So, we have actually hired armed security to patrol the area at night," he said. "We also put in more alarms, more cameras in the area. We reinforced our doors. We reinforced our points of entry. So even if they attempted to break in, it would be very difficult for them. It would take some time. So, we're watching this place 24/7. And it's just not just for my store. It's just for everyone in the area."
The Elyria Police Department told 3News it is actively investigating. Mustafa added that identifying the thieves could be especially difficult because they cut the wires to his security camera system before the thefts, so there's no footage of them.