Thieves snatch cars from SoMa car dealer

Four suspects stole multiple cars from a car dealership in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood early Wednesday morning, a police spokesman said.

The burglary was reported at about 12:40 a.m. at a dealership in the 1500 block of Howard Street, police said.

Royal Auto Group of San Francisco’s service department is the only automobile business on that block. Employees at the business were not immediately available to comment on the burglary.

According to police, the four suspects drove up in a Lexus SUV and one cut the main lock to the gate of the business.

The suspect then drilled through the lock to the storage area, went to where the keys to cars are stored and took some keys along with tools, police said.

The suspects then drove multiple cars worth “several hundreds of thousands of dollars” off the lot, police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza said.

The suspects, three Hispanic males and one Hispanic female, remain at large as of this morning, Esparza said.

One male suspect is described as wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans and had a mustache, while the second wore a light-colored shirt and had a thin build and the third wore a baseball cap, a dark zip-up sweatshirt and is heavy-set, Esparza said.

The female suspect was described as being heavy-set and wearing a light-colored Nike hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans and glasses, he said.

Esparza said police have surveillance footage from the scene and are continuing to investigate the burglary.

Anyone with information about the case is encouraged to call the Police Department’s anonymous tip line at (415) 575-4444 or to send a tip by text message to TIP411 with “SFPD” in the message.