A young female store owner pleaded with three masked gunmen not to harm her grandmother or other family members as they held a gun to the back of her boyfriend’s head, while pulling the backroom contents of the store asunder, searching for cash during a robbery on Monday evening.

 

Police later said four people robbed the store of a quantity of cash on Monday, Oct. 16, at around 7.06 p.m. The store owner later confirmed the group took $1,000 in cash, plus other items. A police spokesperson told Norwood News, “Four suspects….unknown [description]. They were all wearing masks and [some] displayed firearms.” Some residents reportedly told another local store owner they saw a group of three fleeing the location on foot northbound on Bainbridge Avenue.

 

The robbery occurred within a week and just one block from where a commercial fire ripped through seven other neighboring, small businesses on Bainbridge Avenue during the early hours of Tuesday morning, Oct. 10, as reported. It was the third such fire to decimate the local business strip, leaving the affected local merchants struggling once again to figure out a way forward, less than three months from the year-end holiday season, typically one of the busiest times of the year for small businesses.

 

According to police and Yasmin, the store owner, who declined to give her surname, no injuries were reported, though the five people present during the robbery were still clearly in shock an hour or two after the incident as they contemplated how differently the evening could have transpired. Present during the robbery were Yasmin, her mother, her grandmother, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s customer. Her father and boyfriend also work at the business.

A sign on the store’s door requests patrons to gently knock to gain entry. Describing how the event unfolded, Yasmin said, “I was in the back, and then my mom let these three people in because they usually are normal customers.” She said the group went straight to the back of the store where one employee who fixes electronic products was working.

 

“I guess they knew that there was money here, and I don’t know….. They started knocking things down in the back, and then my mom ran to the back to see what was going on, and they had their guns out,” Yasmin continued.

 

She said she recalls seeing three guns before her instincts kicked in. “I tried to run out,” she said. “I tried to run outside and get the police but I fell to the ground and the guy got me. He was like, ‘Go to the back,’ and he had the gun on the side of my ribcage,” she added, her voice trembling.

 

She continued, “I just came around, and I see that they have the gun on my boyfriend’s back of his head, and I’m here trying to calm my grandma down because she was panicking and I was telling the guy, ‘Please, please don’t shoot. I have my grandma here. Please don’t do anything,’ and then they were just saying, ‘Don’t touch anything and stay still’.”

 

Yasmin said they then just kept running back and forth, and as they were about to leave, one of them said, “There’s more money! There’s more money!” She continued, “And they went right back, and they checked again, took my bag. I’m just in shock. I’m grateful that nothing [more serious] happened. It’s just crazy.”

She said at one point she and her family were trying to use their phones but the gunmen, who she described as very young with Dominican accents who spoke in Spanish, kept telling them to leave their phones alone. “They just stole mad things,” she said. “They steal money. They steal a present from.. a Gucci bag, Apple watches, our wallets, so everything.”

 

Asked if she or police had checked nearby trashcans for her handbag since sometimes thieves just want the contents or cash and quickly get rid of the bag, she said, “I don’t know. They didn’t check anything. They just did the fingerprints in here, and they asked us questions, checked the cameras. They had us zooming around to check if we could see them around but they fled so fast that I knew we weren’t gonna find out where they were.”

 

Asked if the cash was taken from a cash register, Yasmin said, “No, it was in the safe because the safe was open, because he [a colleague] was putting money in. Asked if she thought the robbers knew at what time employees were usually taking money in and out of the safe, she said, “I think they knew because we send money to countries. They knew that there was money here. This was planned out because it’s impossible for someone just to come out of nowhere.”

 

Asked if she recognized the group as regular customers, Yasmin said, “My mom said that she recognized…..They looked like they were regular customers, but once that whole thing happened, like we knew that they weren’t customers.” Asked if they were big guys / intimidating, Yasmin said, “[Some] skinny, [some] bulky. They weren’t intimidating. It was more so because they had the guns, they scared us. If they didn’t have those guns, something felt like it could have been done.”

 

Asked if they seemed nervous, Yasmin said, “They were shaking because one of them was in front of the door, and there was two back there. They were just searching everything to see if there was money.” Asked if they broke anything, she said, “They didn’t break anything. They just knocked everything down in the backroom.”

 

She added, “I’m just happy everyone is okay. I was more so concerned about my grandma. She could have gotten like a heart attack.” Seated on a low stool, as one of the male employees stood guard at the door, and holding her head in her hands, the visibly shaken, tiny grandmother offered up prayers. We asked Yasmin if her mom or grandma wanted to say anything. They declined. “They’re just scared,” she said. “They’re just in shock.”

We mentioned that a business owner in the area said he believes crime has gone up in the last two years, and asked Yasmin if that was also her impression. “Around here? Yeah, we’ve never….. I’m not gonna say never, but it hasn’t been this bad until now,” she said. “We’ve been having people with motorcycles, jumping people, taking phones.”

 

She said she thought there had been a recent robbery close by on Decatur. “They also robbed like two weeks ago,” she said. “They had a robbery around there. I just don’t feel like we’re safe here now. We don’t know if they’ll come again, especially knowing that this is a business where we can send money. So somebody must know that there’s something here, that they planned this out, and they sent them over or something.”

 

According to NYPD data, year-to-date robberies in the 52nd Precinct, compared to the same timeframe in 2022, are up 9.6 percent but in The Bronx as a whole, year to date, they have dropped 5.3 percent.

 

Asked if the money transfers were made electronically on site, she said no, that they accepted cash from customers and then the cash was deposited in a bank to make the transfer. “But we might have to change that now,” she said. “That’s going to have to change, definitely. We’re not going to be taking no more cash now. It’s just something that we’re not safe with here anymore.”

 

In reference to future security measures, Yasmin said, “We want to get security in here. I tell my mom that we’re definitely going to have to get a panic button. Yeah, for anything that happens because phones, we can’t rely on. There just has to be some sort of way for us to be safe without us having to go through something like this. Like I wouldn’t even wish this on anyone.”

In terms of the cost of the money taken, Yasmin said, “We didn’t even care for that. We were just like, ‘Take it all. Just leave my family alone’.”

 

Asked if there was anything she wanted to share with other business owners following the incident, Yasmin said, “I just feel like any business out there… I feel like they should start putting signs up [and] anybody that comes in should take off their mask immediately because you never know what can happen…. to be alarmed or to have some type of way to get in contact with the police without having an emergency button or whatever it is.”

 

We mentioned that New York City Mayor Eric Adams had spoken previously during a press conference about the need for mask removal  to be implemented when customers enter stores going forward to assist police / victims with a description in the event of a robbery.

 

“Definitely,” Yasmin said. “I feel like there should be more precaution around the area. If anybody sees something to speak up, not record. Like recording is not a way out. Like anything could have happened here; anybody could have been shot.”