He may be a thief, but he’s got great taste in food — and police are looking to bring him to justice. A series of rooftop burglaries in Old Town has struck some of Alexandria’s best-known eateries: Five Guys, Vermillion, Majestic Cafe, La Bergerie and Overwood. Public-safety officials aren’t sure if they are looking for one suspect or a gang of thieves.
"I like Five Guys, but I don’t know that it’s necessarily in the same league as Vermillion or La Bergerie," said Lt. Jamie Bartlett, spokesman for the Alexandria Police Department. "Ultimately, this guy isn’t looking for food."
Since late May, the series of rooftop robberies has netted little more than the kind of petty cash that restaurants keep in register drawers. The most lucrative heist seems to have been at Vermillion, where a safe and its contents were carted away from the stylish lounge specializing in contemporary American fare. At Five Guys — the Alexandria-based hamburger franchise founded in 1986 — several security cameras were taken after an abandoned effort to ransack a strongbox full of money.
"They left one of the cameras in the dining room," said Johnny Lazo, manager of Five Guys. "I guess they didn’t see it."
Police officials are urging business owners to protect their property by installing alarm systems and security cameras, although they admit that neither of these options offer an absolute guarantee against robbery. In all five of the restaurant burglaries, the suspect or suspects entered by force through a skylight or roof hatch moving swiftly in the dead of the night to claim their loot. All of the establishments said that they have increased security in the wake of being violated, yet even the best security can leave a business vulnerable to resourceful marauders.
"We have a motion detector, and our alarm system worked as planned," said David Hammond, manager of Vermillion. "It seems strange that restaurants would be targeted because 90 percent of our business is from credit card transactions."