The owner of a California arcade that was looted by a mob of vagrants ended up raiding nearby homeless camps looking for his stolen merch after the cops told him their hands were tied.
Moments after Will Luna closed up his Extraordinaire Arcade in San Bernadino on Wednesday night, a woman who had been hiding in its attic dropped inside and unlocked the door, security video shows.
Then a pack of at least 18 people spent the Thanksgiving holiday — Wednesday night into early Friday –stripping the business of anything that wasn’t tied down — including an X-Men arcade machine.
“They were just in there, in and out. They had a free-for-all all,” Luna told The Post, speaking from a Best Buy where he was buying high-end gaming monitors to replace the ones the criminals made off with.
The homeless thieves also stole the arcade’s security cameras, gaming consoles, a debit card reader, snacks, the keys to all of the game machines and even an X-Men arcade cabinet, which they dragged toward a nearby homeless camp, security camera footage showed.
Luna said police performed a basic investigation into the despicable crime, but before the cops got anywhere with their probe, a vagrant told him Friday that he had spotted the owner’s stolen merchandise at a homeless camp behind the building. Luna said he decided to take matters into his own hands.
“I just went through all their tents. I started knocking that s–t down,” Luna said. “I was ripping all the tents up. And I start finding my stuff.”
Luna found gaming accessories, circuit boards from the machines and even a cache of stolen snacks as he Hulk-smashed the first tent village and continued his rampage at another camp across the street.
At one point, Luna called the cops, but he said the responding officers told him they weren’t allowed to enter or move the tents.
“I said, ‘Why can’t you guys just move this s–t and go in there?’ They said, ‘We can’t.’ It violated homeless rights,” Luna recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t give a f–k about how many rights they have. These people have my stuff.’ ”
Eventually, Luna and the police reached an arrangement, he said.
“They said, ‘We can’t go inside, but you can.’ So I did. I kept tearing that s–t down.”
Luna said he didn’t find his most valuable equipment, including several PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch consoles and his prized X-Men machine.
The looters also broke into a salon next to Luna’s arcade, smashing the windows and stealing the register.
He said all of the businesses in the little retail and worship center — which includes a pizza restaurant and a church in addition to the salon and arcade – have been broken into in recent years as three nearby homeless camps have grown.
He said men would stand next to the windows of the salon and masturbate while gawking at the female customers, pushing the owner to call the cops to clear them out.
Shortly after, someone set the shop on fire.
“They’re f–king with us hard now,” Luna said.
“Sorry, 1 sec,” Luna added, pausing the conversation to pay for his purchases at BestBuy. “I’ve gotta spend $1,300 of my life real quick.”
