A Jeep Grand Cherokee plowed into 10 Doors, a bar in Chicago's Little Italy, early Thursday, and by the time the dust settled the burglars had made off with the business's ATM. The crash happened at about 4:20 a.m. at the bar near 1251 W. Taylor St. off Throop Street, leaving no injuries but a wrecked storefront and a missing cash machine.
According to CBS News, the burglars abandoned the Jeep at the scene and fled in a second vehicle, though the direction they took remains unknown. Chicago police were searching for whoever was behind the smash-and-grab, and Belmont Area detectives have taken on the investigation, the outlet reported.
A Familiar Pattern Across the City
The Little Italy crash echoes a string of similar hits on Chicago businesses in recent months. Just weeks earlier, a dark-colored SUV crashed into the front entrance of a vape shop in the 800 block of North Western Avenue, where multiple people grabbed an ATM before driving off in a second dark-colored SUV, per abc7chicago.com. No injuries were reported in that case either.
That Western Avenue theft came just five days after a nearly identical scheme in Irving Park, where SUVs were also used to ram businesses before suspects escaped in a second vehicle, according to Hoodline's earlier coverage of the ATM theft. That same report noted an SUV had been driven through the storefront of Smoke N Snack, also on North Western Avenue, to steal an ATM back in May 2024, and that a December 2025 community alert had warned Wicker Park and Logan Square residents about a crash-and-grab crew using vans and vehicle rammings to raid businesses.
Police Alerts Point to a Broader Burglary Surge
The tactics seen outside 10 Doors mirror a broader burglary alert Chicago police issued after five business break-ins struck the South and Southwest sides within less than three hours, abc7chicago.com reported separately. Those burglaries hit businesses in West Lawn, Archer Heights, Gage Park and Bridgeport, with suspects taking cash and an ATM machine after breaking a front glass door to get inside. Police described the suspects in that case as four males wearing dark clothing last seen driving a silver SUV and a black Kia.
The spike isn't just anecdotal. A Council on Criminal Justice analysis found Chicago's reported nonresidential burglary rate jumped 132% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, and was 434% higher than in the same stretch of 2019. The rate hit 181.1 incidents per 100,000 residents in the first half of 2026, the highest level of the years the organization examined in its review of crime data from Chicago and 35 other American cities spanning 2018 through June 2026. The council cautioned that not all crimes are reported to law enforcement and that local jurisdictions may later revise the figures.
For now, the Little Italy case remains under investigation, with no word yet on whether the Jeep led detectives any closer to identifying who was behind the wheel before it was left behind on Taylor Street.
