Santa Maria Town Center Mall broken into hours after peaceful protest

SANTA MARIA, Calif.- The Santa Maria Town Center Mall was broken into late Sunday night, hours after peaceful protesters asked for justice for George Floyd.

The peaceful protest in Santa Maria began around 1:00 Sunday afternoon.

Some of the protesters left after several hours, but a new group of protesters started to get rowdy around 6:00 p.m. and continued through the rest of the evening.

Some people were burning rubber, doing donuts in the street, setting off fireworks and eventually set a small fire at the intersection of Cook and Broadway near the Santa Maria Town Center Mall.

Around 11:00 that night, some people were able to break into the mall and broke windows at Macy's. It is unclear at this time if anything was stolen or if any arrests were made, but police showed up quickly once the mall was broken into. Most of the crowd disappeared after that.

We reached out to Santa Maria police for more information. They are investigating the situation and said that it is unclear what items were stolen and what stores were broken into. The workers of the stores will have to do inventory to figure out what exactly was stolen. No arrests have been made at this time.