Multiple Santa Clarita restaurants broken into within hours of one another

Multiple Santa Clarita businesses robbed

Masa Ramen is one of several businesses in the Santa Clarita area burglarized Thursday.

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. - Several Santa Clarita restaurants were robbed overnight during last week, but officials say in many cases, the property damage outweighed what was stolen.

Masa Ramen in Saugus was one of half a dozen restaurants robbed between midnight and 6 a.m. Thursday. All of them were within five miles of each other, including Waffle Love, The Kluckin Chicken, and PokiTomik.

Daichi Otagiri is the son of the Masa Ramen's owner. He said when they came to the restaurant in the morning, they saw the damage and checked the security tape. "Two suspects came in. They took the coin drawer and opened up all the cabinets [and] drawers, checking for stuff," he said. "They were gone in maybe three minutes."

The owners of PokiTomik shared images of the damage to their restaurant, showing a similar attack — the glass door busted in, and a cash register drawer picked clean in the parking lot.

Dept. Robert Jensen with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said that the department does have a few suspects, but haven't yet made any arrests.

"It does look like the majority of these cases are instances where the damages caused were actually more than what was actually taken," Jensen said.

The owner of PokiTomik said the thieves got away with a small amount of cash and computer, and that a good Samaritan came to the restaurant with a $100 donation, and a note saying "Stay strong! Don't lose hope in humanity."

Otagiri said he's also thankful for his customers.

"The customers have helped us through both COVID and even through this we get a lot of support online," Otagiri said. "It sucks that it happened, but it's feels good that you know that you know you have the community to help out."