A wild video captures thieves breaking into the store with a backhoe

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For Jorge Fitz-Gibbon

Shocking surveillance video captured the moment a crew of brazen would-be thieves broke into a California convenience store with a massive backhoe, only to walk away empty-handed as a terrified clerk looked on.

Footage of the Monday morning chaos at the AMPM store in West Oakland shows the construction vehicle’s bucket crashing through bulletproof glass and smashing an ATM as the unnamed clerk runs to save his life, according to KGO-TV.

“They’ve smashed the whole front!” shopkeeper Ali Abdulla said as the scammers exited they eventually fled to the sound of sirens.

“That’s at least $70,000 in damage,” he noted, calling it a sign that the American dream was now an “American nightmare.”

The store owner, 51, said he was “born and raised in Oakland” and had “never seen anything like this.”

“I think the only way to run a business in Oakland is, as soon as you close, sleep in the store and stay locked up and loaded with an AK-47 and just be prepared because the police don’t come in time.

“And I’m not blaming the police,” he added. “There aren’t enough around here.”

Abdulla said his employee, who was inches away from the glass when the backhoe crashed into him and had to run for his life, was not injured in the attempted robbery.

The backhoe bucket then pulverizes an ATM, reducing it to a pile of twisted metal.

The masked robbers then reverse a pickup truck to the broken window and attempt to wrap a chain around the battered ATM, only to realize the chain wasn’t long enough.

They panicked when they heard sirens converging on the scene, prompting one of the cooks to dive into the bed of the van as the driver drove away empty-handed.

Police are still looking for the would-be thieves driving the backhoe.

“This is not what we were promised,” Abdulla said. “This is not the American dream. I don’t see the American dream. I think right now it’s the American nightmare.”