CAPTURED: King County deputies catch serial 'smash and grab' booze bandit after violent assault on store employee



CAPTURED -- King County Sheriff's deputies say the suspect wanted in two 'smash and grab' liquor burglaries in September at the same Bartell's store in Burien is in custody.   Prosecutors have charged 18-year-old Terrance Lombard with Robbery in the first degree and Burglary in the second degree.

Detectives say he was arrested on October 13, 2018 after violently assaulting a store employee at Trader Joe's.   According to court documents, Lombard entered the store, pinned the woman against a pallet of pumpkins and started beating her in the head with his fists before loading up his backpack with bottles of liquor.   The employee was able to run out the front door of the store to yell for help from employees who were just arriving in the parking lot.

Another employee chased Lombard but backed off when he says Lombard threatened him with a knife saying 'I warned you'.   The employee flagged down a Burien Police patrol officer who happened to be driving by.  The officer chased Lombard and ordered him at gunpoint to drop the knife.  He complied and was taken into custody.  Officers found the stolen liquor in his backpack.

According to court documents, Lombard admitted to entering the Trader Joe's with the intent of stealing some items.  He claimed he was attacked by a woman and fought back.

Investigators say Lombard is also a suspect in a burglary at the same Trader Joe's on September 18, 2018 in which liquor was stolen.  In all of the cases, deputies say he used a bag of rocks to shatter the bottom pane of glass on a front sliding entry door.

His criminal history includes convictions for Burglary 2, Robbery 2 and Malicious Mischief 2.

Lombard is being held at the Regional Justice Center on $50,000 bail.  He is scheduled to be formally arraigned on October 29, 2018.

WANTED IN KING COUNTY --
A 'smash and grab' burglar busts into a Bartell's in Burien with a bag of rocks. He boosted dozens of bottles of booze: Mostly Hennessy, but some Crown Royal as well.

King County Sheriff's detectives need to know his name.

They say all in all, he's stolen more than $2,000 of liquor -- hitting the same store twice -- 10 days apart, while it's closed and no one’s around.

His first burglary on September 20th didn't start off like he planned. "It appears he left his bag of tricks, his hard objects at the front, so he ran to the back and realized he had to break into the second display case and he didn't have his rocks, so he had to run all the way back to the front of the store again, all the way to the back of the store a second time, this time he had his bag of rocks and he was able to break open the cabinet where the hard alcohol was kept and then you can see him loading all the liquor bottles into his backpack,” described King County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ryan Abbott. “The second incident happened 10 days later on the 30th of September. Same thing. This time he had a red bag, or a red shirt. Looks like he brought more rocks with him this time. The first time he really struggled to break that front window and this time he didn't. He smashed the window and it broke completely this time on the first hit. He hit it a second time just to kind of help and then he went right in, again, ran to the back of the store, knew exactly what he was looking for, loaded up all the hard alcohol items and he was in and out within just over a minute this time. We want this guy. We want to get him off the street and he's already hit the same store twice, so if he's hitting Bartell's and he's hitting the same store twice, there's a good possibility he's going to hit other stores in the downtown Burien area that he's already figured out what he's after and he's going to move to the next store, next week and work on doing the same thing."



If you recognize anything about this destructive booze bandit, or maybe heard someone bragging about busting into a Bartell's in Burien and now had a bunch of bottles of Hennessey and Crown Royal, use the P3 Tips App to submit the information to Crime Stoppers, or call the hot line at 1-800-222-TIPS(8477).