VIDEO: Thief smashes into Uptown scooter shop; $15K in vehicles stolen

CHARLOTTE — Surveillance video shows a thief smashing their way into an Uptown Charlotte scooter shop before they took off with at least one of their scooters.

It happened at Queen City Scooters along West Fourth Street, between Church and Tryon streets.

Channel 9’s Evan Donovan spoke with the owner and learned it wasn’t the first time the store had been hit. It’s the third time it’s happened since they opened in 2021, and the owner thinks it might be the same person -- or people -- who hit his store last time.

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Owner Nick Smith showed Donovan the surveillance video of the theft. You can see bricks come flying through the door, and then:

“He literally climbs through the glass, makes his way to the back here, grabs the first, which was the electric motorcycle/moped,” Smith said.

He wheeled it right out of the door.

Smith said in all, two bikes and two scooters were stolen -- which are worth about $15,000 total.

“If you look, you’ll see a scooter that -- you can tell that someone’s still back here,” Smith said about the video.

In the video, that scooter just disappears from the image, and that’s where Smith said the cameras malfunctioned.

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What may help solve the crime could be in some other surveillance video. Smith said his landlord, Preferred Parking, got some shots of the crime as well.

He said it looks very similar to the last time his store got hit.

“They stole the exact same vehicle. And that guy clearly was on a mission straight for it, it was like a beeline straight for that vehicle,” Smith said. “The exact same method, almost the exact same kind of rocks that were thrown through the store window.”

Donovan reached out to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department to get a police report and ask about any suspects. He has not yet heard back.

Smith said despite the break-ins, business is actually going really well. He’s hoping to triple the size of the store and expand into retail sales, but in a different location.

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