Beverly Grove hit twice: robberies at Thai restaurant, coffee shop shake neighborhood

LOS ANGELES - Amanda Maneesilasan's family has owned Chao Krung Thai for half a century. At 5 a.m. Tuesday, she got a rude wake-up call — her place was being burglarized.

It was actually double trouble in this Beverly Grove neighborhood. Within less than an hour, there were a pair of burglaries. One at her restaurant in the 100 block of Fairfax Avenue, the other at Verve Coffee Roasters on Beverly, a coffee shop around the corner. Both burglaries are under investigation.

Maneesilasan said the burglar "got some kind of ghost key and tried every one of them and then one worked, and he got in." 

Her security cameras were rolling as the thief made a bee-line for the cash register.

"Once he grabbed hold of that cash register he just pulled it out — yanked it out — and just ran," Maneesilasan said.

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She said the thief ran because the noisy alarms were going off. He didn't get much, less than a couple hundred bucks. 

Restaurants don't take a lot of cash anymore," Maneesilasan said. "Everybody pays with credit cards."

It's the second time in six months her restaurant's been broken into. She said she thinks it's the same guy who failed the first time.

He got the cash register box, which she said was a huge annoyance because she was in Big Bear vacationing when she got the early morning call. So, much for the vacation. "All ruined," she said.