Vic's Italian Restaurant broken into for 3rd time in a week, 5th time in a month

Owners of a popular Raleigh restaurant are frustrated from dealing with the latest in a string of break-ins at their business.

Vic's Italian Restaurant & Pizzeria was broken into for the third time in four days and the fifth time in the span of a month on Wednesday night.

Michael Longo told WRAL News he had been at the restaurant's City Market location since 5 a.m. cleaning up the damage from broken windows.

"He kind of knows his way around," Longo said.

The problem has reached a breaking point for the Longo family.

"It's killing the business, it's killing me," Longo said.

Longo said the business was broken into twice within hours early Monday morning and Sunday evening.

"The cops came and they did fingerprints and we clean it up and they left," Mario Longo Sr. said. "About 4:30 in the morning, they call again and another break-in ... and it's very annoying."

Additionally, there were two separate break-ins from October.

Longo said he's not completely sure if someone is targeting Vic's, but suspects it's the same person breaking in. They plan to review surveillance footage from Wednesday night.

"This restaurant supports my family," Longo said. "It supports a lot of other families who work here, so we want to keep it open."

Vic's has a second location on Lake Boone Trail. It's unclear if all the break-ins occurred at the City Market location.

"All the revenue this week is going toward the windows," Longo said. "I just wrote a check for $1,600. We're in $4,500 from all of this."

The news comes as Clyde Cooper's Barbecue owners announced they're looking for another location as they feel downtown Raleigh "does not have a positive" feeling anymore.

"When it comes to the crime, people aren't coming downtown like they used to," said Clyde Cooper's owner Ashley Jessup.

The Downtown Raleigh Alliance recently brought in private security to help patrol parts of downtown.

In Cary, five businesses were hit by break-ins along a 5-mile span of Kildaire Farm Road over the weekend.

WRAL Investigates found the number of reported police incidents for the four-block stretch surrounded by South Wilmington, East Hargett, South Person and East Davie streets in September and October was 132 for each month. That's three times what they were in January (44). Also, there were only 50 incidents in October 2019.