JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Action News Jax is looking into a collection of recent break-ins at businesses in Murray Hill that some store owners believe to be linked.
The manager of ‘Everybuddy’s Laundromat’ on the corner of College Street and Edgewood Avenue shared security camera videos with us showing a man breaking into the building on Tuesday night and stealing the cash register, an hour and a half before the laundromat closed for the night.
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The manager, who didn’t want to speak with us in an interview, told us the laundromat has been broken into three separate times since the start of September, but believes the same person is responsible for all of them.
“It’s really sad. They’re doing it during business hours now, so that’s what’s kind of scary,” said Jacqueline Bells, an employee at Everybuddy’s Laundromat.
On the same day that the laundromat reported its September break-in, Gina’s Delicatessen, a restaurant right around the block, shared a post online saying it had been broken into, along with ‘another business down the street from us.’
Bells is convinced that it was the same person who had been breaking into the laundromat.
“He [always] covers [himself] from head to toe. Even his hands are covered, but we can tell it’s the same guy because of how he walks,” Bells said.
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Action News Jax reached out to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office to ask whether it can verify that these break-ins are linked. JSO told us it was working to get us an answer, but we are still waiting to receive their response.
JSO records do show that there have been eight reported burglaries in Murray Hill since the first week of September. The owner of ‘Five Star Pizza’ on Plymouth Street, less than half of a mile away from the laundromat, confirmed with Action News Jax that two of those burglaries happened at his restaurant.
Bells hopes that, regardless of whether the break-ins are linked, whoever was responsible for the break-in this week doesn’t make a clean getaway.
“I just wish they would find him so they’d stop doing this and hopefully, you know, nobody gets hurt in the meanwhile,” said Bells.
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