New York—At least 14 stores were damaged from rioting during protests in the SoHo shopping district in lower Manhattan over the weekend following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
A few locations in New York City erupted in protests on Saturday night and by Monday the SoHo neighborhood looked like a war zone, with damaged stores clearing up broken glass and boarding their display windows.
Protesters had broken through the display windows of the Chanel store on the 139 street on Sunday night and looted goods while luxury jewelry store APM Monaco on the same street was also looted.
Workers clearing the broken glass and doing repairs outside APM told The Epoch Times that protesters looted jewelry and cash from their store and that around 50 stores in the neighborhood had been damaged.
The display windows of looted Diesel and Burberry were fully covered with boards by Monday noon while a violinist played outside a badly damaged Lulu Lemon store, which sells technical gear for yoga lovers and runners.
Andrew Milano, Store Sales Manager of Mulberry, came to Spring Street on Sunday after hearing news of the protesters looting stores on Saturday night and scheduled for their store to be boarded on Monday.
“And then when I got in this morning, just you see it, it’s like a lumberyard outside with all the stores being smashed. And luckily, we were spared, but this Chanel seems to have gotten the worst of it,” said Milano, adding that he expects the protests to go on for the rest of the week and he’s getting his store boarded up to make sure it is safe for the “next couple nights.”
The display windows of UGG, an iconic apparel brand from California, were also damaged. A few men were repairing the ransacked store while outside another man was clearing up broken glass.
The front door of the Elbaz studio, owned by art dealer and photographer Jacob El-Baz, was also smashed, a UPS notice still stuck on the broken glass. The gallery looked intact inside.
Protesters had smashed the display window of Ame, a creative jewelry store—the display window didn’t display any products and nothing could be looted; a screen behind the broken glass kept playing Ame’s ads on Monday afternoon.
Julia Gaber, an employee of Ame, told The Epoch Times that she didn’t found out about the damage until 9 a.m. Monday.
Gaber said her store just had “broken glass” but “several stores were critically looted—completely. And as you can see right now, everybody is barricading,” she said, adding that when she arrived, most stores were already doing it.
‘Last Night was an ... Escalation’
Milano said he walked around the neighborhood while on his way to work on Monday and that it was “pretty scary.” He said saw 12 additional stores damaged on Sunday night.“Well, it’s actually interesting because yesterday when I was in SoHo, it seemed like the damage was minimal. Like when all got smashed in, their displays were still intact yesterday, and it didn’t seem like anything was looted.
“It seems like last night was definitely an escalation because from what I saw the damage from yesterday to today, more stores were looted last night. As bad as this. I mean seeing Diesel was targeted, maybe it’s because they had left all their product in the window,” said Milano.
NYPD arrested approximately 250 protesters in the aftermath.
