African cuisine at Lakeview East’s Comfort and Cubaneo robbed overnight
The burglary marks the third burglary in nine months for Comfort’s African Cuisine
CHICAGO — With a very hot June day Wednesday, Comfort’s African Cuisine in Lakeview East was hampered by an air conditioning breakdown and the need to clean up after a burglary, only to learn they were one of two businesses in their neighborhood burglarized. overnight.
A year ago, Eunice Oksolae and her two brothers opened the North Side restaurant, which features their late mother’s Nigerian recipes.
“We have Jollof fries, fried rice, candied yams, fufu,” Oksolae said.
On Tuesday night, the business was robbed for the third time in nine months.
Around 2:10 a.m., surveillance video showed the suspects using what appears to be a hammer to break the restaurant’s glass door so they could gain entry. For approximately four minutes, they searched inside the restaurant, on both floors of the establishment, but were unsuccessful. I don’t take anything.
Oksolae and his brothers said they no longer kept cash in the business after losing hundreds of dollars in a previous burglary, and that their security cameras and flat-screen TVs were also destroyed in past incidents.
“Every time it costs us a lot of money,” said Bode Akinpel, one of the owners of Comfort’s African Cuisine. “We’re looking at $1,100 to fix the door.”
“I’m a little disappointed with the situation in this area,” Oksolae added. “It’s a public space and this building is very expensive. This shouldn’t happen.
After leaving the restaurant without showing anything of their burglary, the suspects – dressed in black with ski masks – got back into a dark-colored sedan and drove away.
Just down the block, the owners of Comfort’s African Cuisine learned that the same suspects had also hit Cubaneo at the corner of North Broadway and West Surf Street, whose glass front door was still broken as of Wednesday afternoon.
“It’s so sad that this continues to happen,” Akinpel said. “It’s a busy street and I would never expect this sort of thing to happen.”
According to crime statistics from the Chicago Police Department’s 19th District, there have been 71 burglaries in the area over the past four weeks, an increase of nearly 60 percent over the same period last year.
“We try to make people happy about our culture,” Oksolae said. “We’re trying to make people happy, and it’s so discouraging. »
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