JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A surveillance camera caught a group of teens working together Thursday night to steal from a gas station's convenience store while, the owner said, he was inside at time.
Video shows several teenagers running into the Sunoco on Kings Road at Spires Avenue and grabbing as many items as they could before running out.
Abraham Yassin, who has owned the Sunoco for about 11 years, told News4Jax on Friday that he's upset about what happened, saying the thieves ran back out of the store just as quickly as they came.
"If the police aren't caring what they're doing at this age, and they're not doing anything about it, by the time the grow up, they are going to be killers," Yassin said.
His harsh message came less than 24 hours after Yassin said he was cashing out his usual customers when, within a blink of an eye, he was out of a lot of merchandise
"I had four or five kids, who came to the store -- at the age of 12, 13, around 14 years old -- and they came inside the store, each one of them, and they grabbed whatever they could grab," Yassin said.
In the surveillance video, four young teenagers can be seen walking into the convenience store and scoping out the place for several minutes before grabbing soda, chips and candy and then running out as fast as they could.
The owner called police but, Yassin said, "Basically, he told me he couldn't do anything about it. He refused to write me a report ... because he said the stuff is less than $5,000 and they just don't do it.
So the Sunoco owner called News4Jax to send an important message to parents.
"When they do something like this and they start out at an early age doing stuff like this, that's going to show them that it's the normal thing to do and when they grow up, at the age of 20, they're going to be a criminal," Yassin said. "So this is the time to discpline the kids."
The owner said he's worried this could be a recurring trend with school out for the summer. He hopes parents will talk to their children and drive home the message: Do not steal.