Grease Monkeys Victim of Smash-and-Grab

EAST ATLANTA VILLAGE — Atlanta police are looking for two men and a Dodge Durango in connection with an early morning Jan. 9 smash-and-grab at Grease Monkeys.

The thieves — two men — smashed the plate glass in the doorway with a piece of cinder block to gain access in the break-in, which occurred at 4:12 a.m.

Grease Monkeys, which opened about a year ago just off the southwest corner of Flat Shoals and Glenwood avenues, lost about $1,000 in merchandise, Joe Grondalski, who is a co-owner of the clothing store.

The thieves stole several racks of button-down shirts branded Rock Steady Nation and a tee shirt line, SAF, which is manufactured by a Griffin-based companym Grondalski said.

They managed to break-in without tripping the alarm.

But they tripped the surveillance cameras, which recorded the entire two-minute incident. He turned over that footage to the police, Grondalski said.

The Grease Monkeys break-in follows three other business burglaries in recent weeks.

On Dec. 30, 2012, armed gunmen broke into the Mercantile and San Francisco Coffee in Candler Park. Thieves broke in using a rock to smash through the glass. In that incident, too, the thieves did not trip the alarm but were caught on surveillance video.

And on Dec. 3, Hodgepodge Coffee House in East Atlanta was burglarized, but in that incident the burglar tripped the alarm.