Crime brief: Burglars strike four cars at Mountain View Icon movie theater

Four vehicles were burglarized Tuesday evening outside of the Icon Movie Theatre in the San Antonio Shopping Center, according to police. Two laptops were reportedly stolen in the heist.

All four thefts occurred between 6 p.m. and 9:40 p.m. on April 30. In all four cases, an unknown number of thieves smashed the windows of parked cars at the 2500 block of California Street. A backpack containing an Apple laptop was taken from one vehicle and a Dell laptop was taken from another, police said.

Nothing was stolen from two of the vehicles, but in both those cases there was evidence that the thief or thieves tried to access the trunk of the car, police said.

Among the victims were two Mountain View residents, one East Palo Alto resident and one Menlo Park resident. All four of the burglarized cars were electric — two Teslas and two Chevys, a Bolt and a Volt.

Detectives are investigating the case, and could not immediately confirm whether all four thefts are related.

Mountain View is in the midst of a significant increase in auto burglaries this year, averaging between 80 and 100 reported cases per month since the start of the year. The most commonly targeted areas include downtown Mountain View, the Century Cinema 16 parking lots and the In-N-OUt Burger parking lot on Rengstorff Avenue.

The San Antonio shopping center has not been a hot spot for auto burglaries in previous years, but the number of reported cases are up this year, according to the crime tracking website CrimeReports.

In a separate incident just days before the Icon theater thefts, Mountain View police arrested two 19-year-old East Bay men at the Century Cinema theaters after they were reportedly spotted trying to open car door handles in the parking lots. Initial reports came from a security guard who reported the suspicious activity around 3:50 p.m. on Saturday, April 27.

Officers found two men in the parking lot and reportedly found burglary tools in their possession. A third suspect inside a Honda SUV sped out of the parking lot toward Shoreline Boulevard, but officers did not pursue it.

The two men who were arrested could not provide a reason for being in the theater parking lots, according to police, and theater staff confirmed that neither had purchased a ticket at the box office. They were both arrested on suspicion of loitering and possession of burglary tools.

Nothing was reportedly stolen during the April 27 incident, police said.