Thieves cart away two safes with HK$120,000 as Hong Kong is hit by four burglary cases in one morning
The two safes belonged to restaurants in Hung Hom and North Point, while cash was stolen from a cha chaan teng in Sham Shui Po and an office in Kwai Chung
Two safes containing about HK$120,000 cash were stolen on Monday from two restaurants in Hong Kong.
They were among four burglary cases reported to police within a three-hour period in the morning.
In the case in Hung Hom, a safe with $100,000 was taken from North Viet Pho restaurant in the wee hours of the morning.
Police were looking for two middle-aged men who were captured on security cameras using a crowbar to pry open the rear door of the Vietnamese restaurant to get inside. The crow bar was found abandoned outside the door.
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Police said one of the men, who looked between the ages of 50 and 60, was of thin build and was wearing a light-coloured vest. His companion looked to be between the ages of 40 and 50 and of medium build.
Officers scouted the area but had not made any arrests as of midday Monday.
A female employee, 37, discovered the break-in when she arrived at the ground-floor shop on To Kwa Road and found it had been ransacked.
Besides the cash in the safe, HK$2,000 was taken from a cash register while a HK$5,000 mobile phone and a HK$2,000 computer tablet were also missing, a police spokesman said.
Detectives from Kowloon City police district were handling the case.
Later in the morning, police were called to another restaurant in North Point where a safe containing HK$20,000 was reported stolen.
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A 50-year-old staff member had arrived for work at about 9.30am and found the roller shutter of the Electric Road shop broken open. Crime-squad officers from Eastern police district were investigating the burglary.
In the third case, a cash register with HK$4,000 was stolen from a cha chaan teng in Sham Shui Po. A 47-year-old employee found the Pei Ho Street shop ransacked and called police at about 6.30am.
Another break-in was reported to the force at about 7.30am after more than HK$18,200 in local and mainland currency was stolen from an office in a factory building on Tai Lin Pai Road, Kwai Chung.
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In the first 10 months of last year, police handled 1,569 reports of burglary across the city, down 21.5 per cent compared with the figure in the same period of 2016.
Commissioner of Police Stephen Lo Wai-chung is to hold a press conference on Tuesday to announce the details of last year’s overall crime situation.
