A Los Angeles man is being accused of using his 2003 BMW X5 as a battering ram to break into an Apple Store in Temecula, CA last week. The morning robbery on September 6 was caught by surveillance cameras, which show the BMW barreling through the store's glass front and a number of masked men hopping out to snatch iPhone and iPad display models.
What the LA driver didn't anticipate was the Apple Store not giving up its goods without a fight. After the BMW went grille-first through the glass, a security gate dropped down, trapping the criminals and their getaway car inside. The video below shows the driver repeatedly ramming the gate with his BMW, pulling forward and knocking over displays covered in iPhones, iPads and computers each time to do it.
The driver eventually extricates his X5 from the Apple Store, but the CUV was in such bad shape that police report it didn't make it far from the scene. Having to deal quickly with two flat tires, the driver and his crew reportedly swapped out one for the spare and visited a nearby 7-11 to steal some Fix-A-Flat. The accused driver, Equonne R. Howard, was detained near the scene of the crime a few hours later. Police think he returned looking for his license plate that fell off in the kerfuffle with the security gate.
Howard is being held on $600,000 bail, which is what reports say the damage to the Apple Store is estimated at. He's been charged with enough counts to fill two pages of complaints, which include vandalism, burglary and theft of electronics. Apple Store burglaries have become increasingly common as the popularity of the company's products has gone meteoric, but we've never seen one botched so thoroughly, nor one that clumsily uses a BMW to pick the lock.
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