Overnight, three people broke into the well-known LGBTQ bar Lush Theater & Lounge in Northeast Minneapolis and stole a safe from the establishment in a dramatic fashion.
The whole burglary, from when the alarm started going off when they made entry to them leaving the front door with the safe, only took about three minutes in total, Jared Lawrence, one of the owners of Lush, told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS. They got an alert from the alarm company at about 4:20 a.m.
“I think they knew right where to go. I mean, to be in and out in two to three minutes, and to go behind a locked door, up a flight of stairs, they knew right where to look,” Lawrence said.
Much of the crime was caught on Lush’s Nest surveillance cameras, which the bar shared with 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS.
In it, you see people at the main doors of the building, then making their way inside and going upstairs right away. A photo provided by the bar shows that they broke a glass window on the ground near the main doors to get in.
Once upstairs, you can hear them break into a locked office and see a large crowbar in the hand of the first man who enters.
In the office, you can hear them talk a bit, first taking a small device and one of them saying what sounds like, “this is it,” before another man looks at the safe and says, “guys,” and begins to tinker with it. He eventually takes his crowbar to it and works to slide it out and push it out of the office. From a different surveillance camera angle, you see the safe come crashing down the stairs, and the guys push it out through the front doors. At one point, one of the masked men also goes looking around behind the bar.
The Minneapolis Police Department said they took a report of a burglary of a business at the address for Lush.
Lawrence said that the incident feels targeted.
“It feels kind of like a personal attack as a queer space. We’re kind of off the beaten path, and we’re trying to do a lot of good for the community, and then something like this happens, and it’s a bit of a setback.”
Lawrence said they are in the process of launching a campaign to turn the Lush Theater & Lounge into an LGBTQ nonprofit space.
“What these individuals did is they didn’t just steal from Lush, they stole from the community, and this is a bit of a setback in our goal.”
Lawrence said they have tried to contact neighboring businesses to see if their surveillance video showed the three people arriving at the bar, but haven’t found anything so far.
If you have any information about the incident, contact the Minneapolis police.
Courtesy of KSTP.
