Bronx, NY – More than 500 shopping carts at a new Bronx Toys ‘R’ Us – apparently the store’s entire inventory – were stolen during the holiday season, police said.
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The thefts began on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, which is the official start of the Christmas shopping blitz.
By the time shoppers were doing last-minute sweeps of the store last week, they were stuck holding piles of toys in their arms or leaving in disgust.
“I’m a small person, I had to leave. I couldn’t carry anything,” said Linda Poust Lopez, 47, a legal aide lawyer who was shopping for big items for her nieces and nephews.
“When I stopped an employee and asked ‘Where can I find a cart?’ she shook her head and said, ‘Well, to tell you the truth, they were all stolen.'”
Police in the 44th Precinct are investigating how the carts went missing from the new store at the Gateway Center Mall on E. 149th St.
Police suspect the carts might have been pilfered by an organized gang which could unload them at local scrap metal shops, or by homeless people who use them to carry their belongings.
The carts cost about $200 apiece.
A spokesman for the New Jersey-based toy chain had no comment.
What did they think you open a store in the Bronx & the carts will not be stolen?
i bet if you find these shopping carts, you’ll also find the remains of that plane that landed in the Hudson river.
no one noticed the carts going missing??
The carts were to be a gift to the homeless. Its the liberal way of doing charity.
Hopefully, they ended up at Shoprite of Avenue I !!!
how stupid can toysrus be to leave them outside. they should be indoors.
They should have built the wagon pen before putting the wagons out. Supermarkets in questionable neighborhoods all have them.
How dare they be so naive and not realize that they are in a neighborhood where everything that’s not screwed down gets stolen. They deserve this.
They put temptation in front of these poor criminals – uh I mean innocent takers.
They should be shot.
It’s beyond me, too, why they didn’t have they didn’t have the necessary barriers to restrict the carts from being be taken past a certain point. Even little mom-and-pop stores have them.
In today’s day and age there must be video evidence that will at least explain the theft.
$80,000!
Sounds very much like an inside job, perhaps even by the wagon supplier itself etc. Time will tell. But there’s no way 500 carts got taken by the homeless within 3 weeks.
Usually the ganovim that hang around the Toys R Us parking lots grab and steal what is inside the shopping carts!