Shocking surveillance video captured the moment a crew of brazen would-be crooks burst into a California convenience store using a massive backhoe — only to leave empty-handed as a terrified clerk looked on.
Footage of the Monday morning mayhem at the AMPM store in West Oakland shows the bucket of the construction vehicle crashing through bullet-proof glass and smashing an ATM machine while the unnamed clerk runs for his life, according to KGO-TV.
“They tore up the whole front!” storeowner Ali Abdulla told the outlet of the bungling crooks who eventually fled at the sound of sirens.
“That’s at least $70,000 worth of damage,” he noted, calling it a sign that the American dream was now an “American nightmare.”
The 51-year-old store owner said he “was born and raised in Oakland,” and had “never seen nothing like this.”
“I think the only way you can run a business in Oakland is, as soon as you close, you sleep in the store and stay locked and loaded with an AK-47 and just be ready because the police is not coming on time.
“And I’m not blaming the police,” he added. “There’s just not enough of them out there.”
Abdulla said his clerk, who was just inches from the glass when the backhoe first slammed into it and had to run for his life, was not injured in the attempted heist.
The backhoe bucket then pulverizes an ATM, reducing it to a pile of twisted metal.
The masked thieves then back a pickup truck to the shattered window and try to wrap a chain around the battered ATM — only to realize the chain wasn’t long enough.
They panicked when they heard sirens converging on the scene, prompting one of the cooks to dive into the bed of the pickup truck while the driver screeched away empty-handed.
Police are still looking for the backhoe-driving wannabe crooks.
“This is not what we were promised,” Abdulla said. “This is not the American dream. I don’t see the American dream. I think it’s the American nightmare right now.”
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Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
