Baltimore Business Owner Forgives Teen Burglar After Repeated Store Break-Ins

Tia Hamilton had installed the safe. She had changed the locks. Then, on Nov. 6, the same hooded figure she believed had already hit her shop three times before came back anyway, broke a window, and walked out with a $2,000 camera.

"That little twerp came back," Hamilton said. "And he has escalated."

Four burglaries in less than a year of business was enough. Hamilton announced she was closing DiGi Business Center, her printing and shipping shop on Greenmount Avenue in North Baltimore. But rather than push for criminal charges against the teenager she believes is responsible, Hamilton chose a different path: she opted for compassion.

The break-ins began in February, when a suspect first entered DiGi and stole cash registers. Surveillance footage showed a hooded thief climbing a wall in the back alley and squeezing through a barred window. Two more incidents followed in October. After those, Hamilton upgraded her security, installing a safe and new locks. The November return made clear none of it had mattered.

Across the four incidents, Hamilton estimates she lost around $5,000, a figure that proved unsurvivable for a business that had not yet reached its first anniversary. "That's a big strain," she said. "It's a strain like regular people wouldn't understand."

"I have to move on to do other things," Hamilton said. "I'm tired."

Hamilton said an anonymous tip helped detectives identify the teen behind the break-ins, and she claims he is also wanted in Baltimore County for stealing a car. "There is a warrant that was written up for him," she said. Baltimore police confirmed the suspect is believed to be a juvenile, but at the time of reporting, no arrests had been made.

The decision to extend mercy sits in complicated territory. A warrant for the suspect exists, and police were actively pursuing a juvenile suspect independent of Hamilton's posture toward charges. Whether her choice to forgive affects that investigation remains unclear.

DiGi was not the only Greenmount Avenue business absorbing these hits. The owner of a neighboring mattress store said his shop was targeted five times in a single weekend, and now keeps the store locked against what he described as repeated teen intrusions. "They punch the windows," he said. "They no buy the mattress. They only come inside, they make it a problem. They damage the mattresses."

Another neighbor captured the dread that has settled over the corridor: "People, they say, oh, Greenmount Avenue. Are you okay? Are you safe?"

Juvenile burglaries have strained businesses across Baltimore beyond Greenmount Avenue. In October 2025, Baltimore police arrested three teens, two 16-year-olds and one 14-year-old, for 13 burglaries spanning Hampden, the Central District, and Northeast District. Oliver Alak, who works at Hampden Tobacco, described teens breaking in and stealing the register along with roughly $1,000 in products. "This is not the time to rob," Alak said. "We're already suffering as is." Police have not connected those arrests to the DiGi Business Center incidents.

For Hamilton, the closing of DiGi represents both a financial loss and a deliberate moral choice. She built something on Greenmount Avenue in under a year; a teenager took enough of it that she could not continue. She chose, in the end, not to take that out on him.