Gwinnett County authorities are looking for a man who police say robbed a phone store at gunpoint and forced an employee to the floor – all while munching on a bag of chips.
The incident happened just before 10:30 a.m. March 30 at the Metro PCS store in the 4600 block of Jimmy Carter Boulevard near Norcross.
Gwinnett police Cpl. Michele Pihera said the victim told officers he was outside the store setting up a display when he was approached by the suspect.
“The suspect told the employee that he needed to buy a power cord,” Pihera said in an email. “They both walked into the store together. According to the victim, the suspect was holding a Food Depot bag and eating from a bag of chips.”
After the suspect selected a power cord, he and the employee walked up to the register to complete the purchase and the suspect “withdrew a black, semi-automatic handgun from his waistband and pointed at the victim,” Pihera said. “The suspect ordered the employee to lie on the ground and then he began removing cash from the register.”
She said the suspect then ordered the victim to assist him with emptying the other cash registers and a nearby purse before leading the suspect to a back room and ordering him to stay there. The suspect was last seen walking out the front door of the store.
Pihera described the suspect as black, in his late 20s to early 30s, between 5-foot-11 and 6-foot-2 and weighing 180 to 210 pounds. He had a 1- to 2-inch long goatee and “acne-type scaring” on his left cheek, Pihera said, and was wearing a black leather jacket, a dark hooded sweatshirt with “Nike” on the chest, a white baseball cap with a blue bill, baggy blue jeans and black shoes.
She said officers were able to obtain video from the Food Depot in the same shopping center that showed the suspect arriving in a 2002-2006 dark gray or charcoal Toyota Camry with black steel wheels, a sunroof and possibly having a dealer drive-out tag.
Pihera said the suspect may also be responsible for an armed robbery of a Family Dollar store in Lilburn a day earlier. The suspect in both robberies was wearing the same clothes, she said.
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