Montgomery County food court burglar helps self to McDonald's ice cream, police say

BETHESDA, Md. - While eight suspects broke into a Bethesda mall food court, one of the teens helped himself to some McDonald's ice cream, according to police.

Montgomery County police said the burglary happened at Westfield Montgomery at about 3:20 a.m. on June 21.

Officers said they responded to the mall after an alarm was activated at the J. Chow restaurant inside the food court. The suspects were not found when officers arrived at the scene, according to officials.

Investigators obtained surveillance footage that showed the suspects entering restaurants such as Surku Japan Sushi Bar, McDonald's, Wicked Waffle and J. Chow.

One of the suspects helped himself to an ice cream cone from the McDonald's, police told FOX 5.

Police responded to the mall again two days later after a reported burglary at about 3:20 a.m. on June 23. Security officers had four of the suspects in their custody when police arrived at the scene, officials stated.

Montgomery County police said they have dealt with similar incidents like this before.

"For one reason or another, maybe there are some extra doors in the mall that haven't been secured properly, suspects find out about it and they may go back multiple times because they realize the same door is left open every single time, and you know, they keep going back until they get caught," said Montgomery County Police Officer Rick Goodale. "It just goes to the fact that they felt comfortable enough to just go into a mall and just kind of help themselves to whatever they wanted."

Through the course of their investigation, detectives said they identified and arrested five of the eight suspects. Their names and photographs were not released due to the suspects being under the age of 18, police said.

Detectives were releasing surveillance footage from the mall in hopes of identifying the three remaining suspects.

They were described by officials as:

FOX 5 attempted to contact mall management about the burglaries and their security going forward, but have not heard back as of Monday evening.

Anyone with information that could aid detectives in their investigation was urged to call the Montgomery County Police Department's 2nd District Investigative Section at (240) 773-6710.