Employees of a novelty store in California were fed up by robberies and wrestled to the ground the last alleged thief who brazenly stole from the shop.
Unfortunately, the man was armed and escaped after threatening the workers.
The incident unfolded on Friday at about 8:00 p.m. at the “Into the Retroverse” store in the city of Colton.
The workers said that the alleged burglar walked into the store with a mask and surgical gloves and began filling his bag with Pokémon cards worth thousands of dollars.
“He just started taking stuff, he said, ‘I need the money, I need the money,’ and that’s when my friend Alex attacked him,” said Arturo Garcia to KTLA-TV.
The worker pushed the display case into the thief, and then the rest of the workers grappled with the man.
“I tried to throw him to the ground, that’s when he got tired and pulled out the gun,” said Alexander Sanchez Bernal.
The man held them at gunpoint and grabbed other products before running out of the store.
Bernal said that the suspect told him he should have shot him as he left.
“I was scared. I was scared of what was gonna happen, for my buddies, and for anything,” said Bernal.
Jovanne Bernal, the brother of Alexander Bernal and owner of the store, said he released the video to KTLA in hopes that someone might see it and help police identify and catch the suspect. He added that the shop has only been open for seven months, but they’ve been robbed three times already.
He told KTLA that the store was his childhood dream.
“It sucks,” the owner added. “You spend your life trying to build it and then somebody just walks in and says I’m going to take it and because of how things are, they can.”
He said that management at the center has only responded that they’re “working” on improving security.
“Three times I’ve been broken into in the past six or seven months and they are still working on it,” Bernal added.
KTLA said they reached out for comment from the management at Colton City Plaza.
Colton is a city of about 54,000 residents about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.
Here’s the video of the incident:
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