Bad things are happening in threes at Santa Monica Music Center.
The mid city business owned by freshman city council member Lana Negrete was broken into — yet again — early Tuesday, the Santa Monica Police Department has confirmed.
A man wearing a black and white checkered hoodie was caught on security cameras smashing the front windows on Santa Monica Boulevard with a fire extinguisher and making off with at least three high end guitars.
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The instruments were donated just days earlier by the Guitar Center in Hollywood to support Negrete’s non-profit organization, Outreach Through The Arts, which provides free music lessons to children from low-income families.
“He literally stole the donated instruments for the kids that we just put up three days ago, because we’re having auditions for our rock band for these kids that can’t afford an instrument,” Negrete told The Santa Monica Daily Press.
“The whole point is so that these kids can have their own instruments.”
The incident comes just two months after a September 16 break-in which was witnessed and reported to police by a woman sleeping in her car.
Santa Monica Music Center also sustained losses of more than $180,000 from vandalism and theft during the May 31, 2020 looting spree.
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