Alioto's Break-in Not the Work of Master Criminals

They broke holes in the roof, two walls and a ceiling, destroyed locks and doors, ruined drywall and pulled down ceiling tiles, moved heavy equipment out of place, and finally set off an alarm.

When they fled, they left behind on the roof a ladder and two bags of tools, and inside, a dirty sweatshirt and two sledgehammers used to bash their way through the walls. Among the prizes they missed were thousands of dollars worth of wine and liquor and a large safe of unknown contents.

They made away with the contents of two bottles of wine coolers in their bellies.

Alioto's Restaurant, 3041 N. Mayfair Rd., was much the worse for wear after the break-in, which appears to have happened Sunday night around 10 p.m., according to police. But the crooks were no doubt pretty frazzled, too, after doing some heavy demolition work and then racing away in panic with nothing to show.

Police responded to an alarm at 10:22 p.m. Sunday night but found nothing much amiss, and so the company keyholder didn't stop by to check it out. The officer had found the handicapped door at the entrance unsecured when he tried it, but it locked when he let it close again, and he found no sign of forced entry there or at any of the other doors. Assuming the alarm was false due to someone's failure to secure the door, he did not investigate further.

But the burglars hadn't tried to enter any of the doors. They had brought a ladder, climbed onto the roof and pulled the ladder up behind them so it wouldn't be seen. They cut a hole in the roof and let themselves down, then went on a spree of smashing their way into one room and cooler after another.

The business manager discovered the damage Monday and called police, who traced a route of destruction throughout the building starting with the hole in the roof over the coat room. The burglars then ruined a steel latch and damaged the door of a liquor storeroom without managing to get in, removed ceiling tiles next to its wall, climbing up and, wrenching aside a metal support, broke through the drywall ceiling.

They came out with two bottles of Remy Martin cognac and the "shake of the day" jug containing loose cash and coin, but set them down and didn't remember to pick them back up.

And so it went. Wrecking the latch on a beer cooler and taking nothing. Bashing through the cinder block wall of the wine room with a sledge, making a hole big enough only to reach an arm inside and snag some wine coolers.

Stopping for a break, drinking the coolers and taking off a sweatshirt drenched in perspiration and, no doubt, DNA. Demolition is hard work.

In the basement, they had to move a huge cooler to expose the wall of the business office in order to smash through its drywall. Inside was the safe, but it appeared they hadn't touched it. Somehow, they set off an alarm and must have beat it out of the building through the door the officer later found ajar.