Bumbling crooks rip and drag ATM out of 7-Eleven in Texas, still end up empty-handed
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This screenshot shows the moment an ATM was violently ripped out of its mooring with a hook and a cable at a 7-Eleven in Texas.
PHOTO: WHITE SETTLEMENT POLICE DEPARTMENT/YOUTUBE
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For a brief moment before dawn on Christmas Eve, a 7-Eleven in Texas became the unlikely stage for what police described as a serious felony and what surveillance cameras recorded as slapstick.
Shortly before 4am, a stolen sport utility vehicle roared into the carpark of the brightly lit convenience store in White Settlement, a suburb of Fort Worth. Two men – dressed in black hoodies, masks and gloves – leapt out.
One of the men smashed through the glass entrance, sprinted past shelves of chips and candy, and made straight for the ATM.
A metal cable, already attached to the SUV outside, trailed behind him. He pried open the bottom of the machine and fastened the cable to the safe inside.
That was the plan. What followed was physics.
Outside, the driver hit the gas.
The ATM tore loose from its corner, bulldozing through store aisles, flattening shelves and sending snacks airborne.
The machine then burst through the front of the store in a shower of glass and debris.
The SUV sped off with the ATM safe dragging behind it, clanging and bouncing down the street.
Inside the store, the aftermath looked like a convenience-store apocalypse: toppled shelves, demolished doors and a carpet of crushed chips.
Officers later found the ATM in a ditch near a car dealership, the safe still intact and, crucially, still full of money.
“At this time of year, you see that level of desperation,” said Chief of Police Christopher Cook, “and that’s what makes it dangerous.”
Police tracked the SUV to a nearby carpark and determined it was stolen from a Dallas apartment complex, roughly an hour before the attempted robbery.
No arrests have been made, and investigators believe the suspects may have fled on foot or been picked up by another vehicle.
The botched heist appears to follow a familiar script.
Chief Cook said similar attempts across the Dallas-Fort Worth area have involved stolen SUVs, two suspects and the same basic method, though with similarly poor results.
“He’s been hit three times,” the chief said of a convenience-store owner whose properties have been targeted. “It is always a stolen SUV, it’s always two guys, and they do the same thing.”
Despite the destruction, no injuries were reported.
