Shoreline bowling alley burglarized for the third time in three years

SHORELINE, Wash. — Spin Alley Bowling Center told KIRO 7 thieves stole around $2,000 in cash and caused up to $15,000 in damages early Thursday morning.

“There was glass completely covering the ground both outside and inside trailed into the facility,” said owner Joe Montero. “They broke through the drywall and pried the quarter machine off the wall. Got a big, long pry bar that he kind of just smashed everything up with.”

Surveillance video shows a man wearing a mask and wig taking out both of their front doors with a heavy-duty crowbar.

“He’s not poking around anywhere else, he goes straight to the door with the safe,” Montero said.

It gave him reason to believe that the suspect had already cased their bowling alley ahead of time.

“He beelined it in the door, straight to the safe which is enclosed in a cabinet. So he didn’t open up any other doors or any other drawers. He opened the doors to the safe, and pulled it out of there,” Montero said.

The suspect could be seen dragging the safe out to a masked woman, who helped him put it into their black SUV.

Then he headed back in for a second time, as he wrestled down a quarter machine.

It will also cost the owners a couple of grand to replace.

“So you’ve gotta make sure that you have savings in place to cover things like this. And gosh, we’d love to use it to do greater things for our facility instead of to recuperate from a break-in like this,” said owner Rose Werelus.

The entire break-in only lasted about five minutes from start to finish, but it left them with a loss that will take them much longer to recover from.

“This is a slower time of year for us. When it’s nice outside, people don’t think about coming inside to go bowling and patronize our restaurant so it’s an especially difficult time of year for us to have a huge loss like this,” Werelus added.

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