16-Year-Old and Eight Others Arrested in Fort Worth Smash-and-Grab Heist

A brazen smash-and-grab robbery at a Fort Worth supermarket has led to the arrest of nine suspects, including a 16-year-old, with police investigating whether the same group is responsible for similar crimes across Texas.

The violent heist took place on February 9 at around 4:55 p.m. inside an El Rancho Supermercado. Witnesses say four suspects stormed the store, pepper spraying employees and smashing glass display cases to grab jewelry while four others acted as lookouts and a driver waited outside.

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“Suddenly, we couldn’t breathe, we started covering our mouth because we started coughing,” recalled Lourdes Torres, who was inside the store at the time. “It was something really terrible, what I witnessed. It was scary,” she added. A bystander captured the chaos on cellphone video, showing one suspect using what appeared to be a hammer to shatter the display cases before grabbing handfuls of jewelry.

Fort Worth Police quickly launched an investigation, sharing details with the city’s Real-Time Crime Center. Their Tactical Intelligence and Operations Surveillance Team (OST) followed the suspects to McKinney, where local police officers assisted in making the arrests. The nine suspects, ranging in age from 16 to 51, were taken into custody without incident. Authorities recovered a significant haul—more than $100,000 worth of stolen jewelry from the Fort Worth robbery alone.

But this case is far from closed. Fort Worth detectives are now working with law enforcement agencies in Dallas and Houston to determine if the same crew is behind other high-profile smash-and-grab robberies in the state. One of those victims, Angel Cuenca, believes he’s already seen the suspects in action—twice.

“The police haven’t come out and confirmed it yet, but we’re pretty confident that it’s them just looking at the videos and the standstill image,” Cuenca said.

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His family’s jewelry store, Joyeria Princesa, located inside an El Rancho in East Dallas, was hit in December when four men smashed cases and stole over $600,000 worth of gold jewelry. Then, just weeks ago, another one of his locations was targeted.

“Unfortunately, our second store ended up getting hit a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t really release much information on it just because I wanted to let the police catch up and do their work,” Cuenca said.

Ed Gonzalez, the Harris County Sheriff in Houston, took to social media on Saturday to say he believes at least four of the suspects arrested in McKinney are tied to similar crimes in the Houston area.

“This crew is suspected of carrying out similar crimes in the Dallas area, as well as others in the greater Houston/Harris County area. We hope these offenders get prosecuted to the fullest extent,” Sheriff Gonzalez posted on X. With multiple El Rancho supermarkets targeted, Cuenca believes these criminals knew exactly where to strike.

“I think one of the reasons these guys were going after all the El Ranchos is because they knew that vulnerability, they knew that that was an ultimate weakness in their infrastructure,” he said.

While the arrests bring some relief, store owners and employees remain on edge, hoping for more security measures to prevent future attacks.

“It’s just not the same anymore,” Cuenca admitted. “We’re always on high alert.”

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