A McDonald’s restaurant in the French city of Nantes was robbed this week after criminals destroyed the facade of the building using an excavator they had stolen from a nearby construction site.
The restaurant, located by the Cheviré bridge in Nantes, took substantial damage following the robbery in the late hours of Wednesday night, with a large part of the facade of the building utterly destroyed by the robbers.
The criminals behind the attack stole an excavator from a nearby construction site and drove the machine to the restaurant building where they used it to smash apart the exterior of the building but only were able to net around €2-3,000 (£1,687-2,530/$2,289-3,434), according to a report from France Bleu.
Managers of the restaurant were only notified of the damage to the restaurant at around 5 am on Thursday and were forced to rush to help employees find shifts at other restaurants. Around forty employees are said to be affected by the closure of the restaurant, which is expected to last several weeks, at a minimum.
“We expect an armed attack when we work at the McDonald’s, not a backhoe attack,” one of the managers told the broadcaster.
Investigators are currently reviewing local surveillance footage and believe that three people may have been involved in the attack on the restaurant and may have fled the area in a BMW vehicle.
The bizarre attack comes nearly four years after a Lidl supermarket in the Dublin suburb of Tallaght was attacked by looters during a heavy snowstorm, some of which used an excavator to destroy a large section of the building.
The group, who were well-known criminals, had built barricades making local roads impassable and Irish authorities had to deploy the army to help clear them for local gardai to operate in the area.
“The Army smashed the barricade, and the armed support and ERU are on the scene. They were assisted by defence forces. Armed gardai who rushed in SUVs and were instrumental in getting the scene safe,” a source said at the time.
The incident also comes as France faces more and more urban unrest and violence in recent years, which has led some to claim the country is on the brink of a civil war.
Last year, a poll revealed that nearly half of the French population would support the French military intervening to restore order in the country, even if the current government did not order them to do so.