After third robbery, store tells customers to show face
STAMFORD — After being held up at gunpoint for the third time this year, a West Side grocery has stopped allowing maskwearing customers into the store without being checked out first.
“We are asking customers to remove their masks. We don’t have a choice. It’s something we have to do,” a store manager said. “Wearing masks is covering the robbers’ identities and when they have a hood it really leaves you vulnerable. Three employees have had guns pointed at them.”
After the second robbery, in June, the manager said the owners installed a panic button to be used in the event of another stickup.
Lt. Tom Scanlon said the alarm was activated at the West Main Street Grocery store about 10:40 p.m. Wednesday, after two masked men wearing hoodies appeared in the store, and one of the men displayed a handgun. The clerk turned over the money and the two fled west on West Main and then south on Victory Street.
The male clerk who was held up was not injured, Scanlon said.
The store was robbed in similar fashion on June 16 and on June 3.
Director of Public Safety Ted Jankowski said the city would
enforce state regulations that people wear masks when inside establishments. He said this week that officers had checked out the situation and the store had made arrangements to comply with regulations.
The store is keeping its doors locked, Jankowski said. When a customer arrives the clerk tells the customer to take off his or her mask for the security camera in the doorway, and then the customer is told to put the mask back on and enter the store.
“People in town understand that this has happened to us a bunch of times, unfortunately,” the manager said.
During the first robbery in June, two gunmen walked into the store at 9:06 p.m. before robbing the clerk. The suspects then fled down Victory Street. During the second, a man wearing a red hoodie and a blue surgical mask pulled a gun and demanded the cash from the store clerk. He walked behind the counter before taking a small amount of cash and fleeing on Liberty Street.
At the time, police said the robberies might have been committed by the same people.
“There is a strong possibility they are related,” said Sgt. Paul Guzda after the second robbery.
On the same night as the second robbery, a man in a blue surgical mask and blue hoodie robbed a Mobil gas station on the West Side at gunpoint.
Scanlon, said it has not yet been determined if the latest robbery is related to the earlier ones.
Anyone with any information is asked to call investigators at 203-977-4417.