The modus operandi is awfully similar: Around 3 a.m., two people wearing black and covering their faces walk into a 7-Eleven, order the employees to the floor, and then a third person backs a truck up through the large plate glass front so that the other two can load up an ATM in the back.
It’s happened twice just this week in Montgomery County. It’s also happened there before, as well as in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and Northeast D.C.
If it is the same three people responsible for this crime, they’re getting better at it.
One of the first attempts didn’t work out so well, leading police to call it “slapstick” in its execution. Subsequent attempts in places such as Kettering, Maryland, and Mount Rainier, Maryland, were also unsuccessful.
But with two successful heists this week alone, the success rate seems to be going up, even if police in the region aren’t ready to say definitively that the same three people are responsible.
“We haven’t positively identified any suspects,” said Montgomery County police Capt. C. Thomas Jordan. “We’re looking at similar methods, but we really have to make sure that we get the right people. So we’re not to the point where we can fully say that yet, but there is no doubt there are similarities with the way the crimes are being committed.”
Police concede it would be nearly impossible to stake out every 7-Eleven at 3 a.m. in the hopes of catching these guys red-handed, but they’re trying to be proactive.
“We do work with the company itself, with 7-Eleven and any other company that’s experiencing something like this,” Jordan said. “Some of it’s about crime prevention, and some of it’s about trying to get ahead of it.”
But until police are able to positively identify one or all of the suspects and link them to every incident, police won’t be able to rule out the work of some copycats in the area.
“If it is the same guys … it does appear that they are honing their game a little,” said Jordan, who noted both ATM robberies this week were successful for the robbers. “If it is the same people, it looks like they’re getting better at this.”
The ATM hit earlier was at a 7-Eleven on Tech Road in Silver Spring, Maryland, just off U.S. Route 29. Another robbery happened at almost the exact same time along New Hampshire Avenue in the Cloverly, Maryland, area Tuesday morning.
