Palo Alto police are looking for two men who they say committed armed robbery at Fry’s Electronics on Wednesday afternoon and took off with three video-game consoles.
The two men allegedly walked into Fry’s shortly before 4 p.m., grabbed three video-game systems off the shelf and ran for the exit. After one of the men ran out with two of the consoles, a Fry’s employee tried to block the exit to stop the second man, who was holding the remaining console. At that point, the second man pulled out a silver revolver and pointed at the victim, police said. The employee backed away and the second suspect ran outside to join his colleague.
The two men then took off from the Portage Avenue store in a dark four-door sedan toward El Camino Real. Palo Alto officers arrived at the scene minutes after getting the call but could not locate the suspects, who remain at large. Police said the three game systems have a combined value of about $1,200.
Both men were described as Hispanic and between 25 and 30 years old. Both had short-cropped black hair and were wearing jeans and T-shirts. The armed suspect wore a dark T-shirt, while the other man wore a white one. Police have provided a surveillance photo of the two men and anticipate releasing a sketch of the armed suspect in the near future.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call the department’s 24-hour dispatch center at 650-329-2413. Anonymous tips can be e-mailed to paloalto@tipnow.org or sent via text message or voice mail to 650-383-8984. Tips can also be submitted anonymously through the department’s free mobile app, downloadable at bit.ly/PAPD-AppStore or bit.ly/PAPD-GooglePlay.
Fry’s has the weirdest policy towards expensive items.
I recently went there and everything had to be “invoiced”. If I was carrying an item more than 30 dollars for more than ten seconds, I would be bombarded with a worker and treated like a criminal.
The odd part is how you are actually able to get your hands on the expensive items at all, but Best Buy really doesn’t care, since everything has a magnetic device. Fry’s does the foolish thing of having 30 dudes walking around and one person sitting by the front door.
Right! So, honest customers get the ‘receipt harassment’; while a thief can just run out the door!
You don’t have to stop and show your receipt to the door harasser, here or at any other typical retailer. I never do. I just blow on by and ignore the doorperson. The only place where the retailer can force that is if you agree to it as a condition of entry, or to shop — such as at Costco, where the prospective customer agrees to do so in their membership agreement.
Maybe Fry’s can catch the robbers when they come back to return the devices because they were defective or not working…
Can you imagine destroying the rest of your life by flashing a gun while stealing $1200 worth of video game equipment? I mean, it’s not like you are going to retire on the proceeds and never work again or anything. If you eat Raman the money may last you, what, a few days? And for that you risk a serious criminal record that will block all sorts of jobs and opportunities for you for the rest of your life? I feel sorry for these guys, for their stupidity.
I wonder if anyone has ever robbed a gun store with a gun they filched from the store. Hey, just wondering.
Hahaha Chance, like Tuco did in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly? 🙂
I used to work for Frys and still know people that work there. FYI. It is not policy to get an invoice for items $30 and up. Employees do that because every damn day you are there the department manager and John Fry himself threatens you to make commission or you lose your job. An the poor workers say dumb stuff like that because they don’t want to lose their job. And also since John Fry changed they commission policy. A couple years back every worker needs to let welt write up everything that leaves the department just to have trier head above water with these people. But in the end it never counts because they will get fired for it anyways.
Dumb and dumber! Wow, the penalties for robbery are high enough, but escalating by pulling a gun adds, I believe, 10 years to what ever sentence you get, makes it a felony, and if dumb or dumber have prior felony convictions, the sentence is multiplied and add another strike. A decade or more in jail for some lousy video games?