SAN LEANDRO, Calif. (KRON) – More than 70 new cars were stolen from the San Leandro Dodge dealership, as looting and destruction hit the city Sunday night.

The car dealership says it spent a majority of the day fixing the cars that were left on the lot and cleaning up glass from the shattered windows and doors.

The owner of the dealership says the looting began across the street at the Marina Square Shops. 

Around 7:30 people made their way into the dealership and by 10:30 people drove off with nearly $2.7 million worth of brand new cars.

Video posted to social media shows looters burning out tires then driving brand new cars off the lot.

“Oh it was a war zone. They came in, finally got in here and they had tear gas and there were cars crashed everywhere. It was bad and 70 plus cars are missing,” Carlos Hidalgo said. 

Owner of the dealership, Carlos Hidalgo says looters drove off with more than 70 of his cars Sunday night – Everything from trucks, Jeeps, Chargers and the expensive Dodge Challenger Hellcats.

He says looters broke into the building, and found the key safe. 

“They drove a car right out of my showroom and fled,” Hidalgo said. 

He says the thieves then used some of the cars to exit the parking lot by ramming through vehicles blocking access to the driveway.

Now empty parking lot spaces are left, representing cars that were stolen. 

“Police was overwhelmed. They hijacked all of San Leandro last night so nobody could come out so they had about 5 hours of looting inside the dealership,” Hidalgo said. 

Across the street at Marina Square, stores like Nike were also ransacked.

Looters left scattered shoe boxes across the floor.

Crews replaced the broken windows and glass with plywood in preparation for Monday night.

“A life cannot be brought back. These cars can be replaced and they’re insured but you know we need to not act or react this way. This hurts everybody, not just me but all of my employees. I have 70 people that work here. Today was their first day back from 2 months of the COVID recovery and they came back to something like this, so you know it hurts everybody,” Hidalgo said. 

So far the dealership recovered about 20 cars and to prevent this from happening again, they’ve hired new armed security to watch the dealership at night.

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