The Murfreesboro store owner says his business has been affected after a car was rammed into the store and $40,000 worth of phones were stolen

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WSMV) – New video showed the moment thieves rammed a stolen car into a cell phone store and stole $40,000 worth of items.

The store was stocking up for the holidays when the theft happened.

A cell phone store owner said all he was left with was a boarded-up wall after a group of people drove into this Murfreesboro store and stole dozens of cell phones.

Surveillance video showed someone ramming a stolen car into the SD CellPlus store on Memorial Boulevard on Nov. 17.

The shop’s owner, who goes by the name Delo, said he still couldn’t believe what happened.

“My pride and joy that I spent years building is almost shattered,” Delo said.

The store’s surveillance cameras captured the entire event on video. The interior cameras showed the car crashing into the front of the building, and the exterior cameras showed three people jumping out of the car.

“Late that night, around 2 a.m., I got a message in my phone on my alarm system that the alarm had gone off,” Delo said.

As he looked through his camera system, Delo said he saw the three people walk straight to his store display full of dozens of iPhones. The group first attempted to break the display glass before moving on to removing the back cover of the display, grabbing every iPhone they could find before driving off.

“You don’t think something like this is going to happen to you, but it happens, and it’s sad that it happens. It’s Christmas time, it’s Thanksgiving, people are buying gifts, so those are usually my busiest months, November and December, but since we’re closed it was still nice,” Delo said.

As Murfreesboro police work to track down the people who damaged his business, Delo said he lost even more money in the days after the break-in.

“Customers think we closed or moved, which is just a loss of business,” Delo said. “I hope they get caught. Today I actually had a friend have the same scenario where a car hit him and got into his building. It’s a thing that’s going around.”

Murfreesboro police were investigating at least two car accident cases when WSMV reached out to them for answers. Police said they have no evidence to suggest a connection between the break-in at Delo’s store and a 7-Eleven break-in on South Church Street days earlier, but are not ruling anything out.

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