April 18, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Police following leads in Bangor store robbery> Two men sought in holdup of Ohio Street market

BANGOR — Police on Friday were still looking for two men who held up an Ohio Street convenience store at gunpoint.

During the robbery, which occurred shortly after 6:30 p.m. Thursday, two white males entered Cameron’s Nite Store, demanded cash from the female clerk at gunpoint, and made off with an undisclosed amount of cash.

Nothing else is believed to have been taken.

Clerk Stacie Pinkham, a 26-year-old mother of three who has been working at Cameron’s since late August, was the only store employee on duty when the armed robbery occurred.

The incident lasted “maybe a minute to a minute and a half,” Pinkham recalled Friday. “But it seemed like a long time.”

“They just plowed in quickly, and one jumped over the counter with the gun and the other just stood here,” Pinkham said, indicating a spot on the customer side of the counter.

She said that while neither of the men hit her during the robbery, she was knocked from her chair to the floor when one of the men, wearing mirrored sunglasses, leapt over the roughly 3-foot-high customer counter.

Pinkham said she had not begun to feel threatened until that point. She said she then realized: “Oh my God, I’m being robbed.”

“He just knocked me over. I was just sitting down. … He actually pulled me up off the floor to open the register,” she said.

“He had the gun stuck to my [buttocks]. He told me they were going to shoot me in the [buttocks] if I didn’t give them the money in 10 seconds, and then he started counting down,” Pinkham said.

After removing the cash from the register, Pinkham said, she put it on the counter, and the second man, who was wearing a nylon stocking over his head, picked it up.

“Then they told me to get on the floor. I just froze there,” she recalled. Unable to hear whether the two had left the store and afraid to get up for fear of being shot, Pinkham stayed behind the counter another minute or so. Then, when she felt safe enough, she got up, grabbed the store keys from her coat pocket, locked the door and called 911.

On Friday afternoon, Pinkham appeared to be handling the incident well. She took Friday off at the insistence of her co-workers, but said she expects to be back on the job today. “Work is work and I do like my job a lot.”

Minutes before Pinkham stopped by the store for a brief interview Friday, a delivery man arrived with a floral arrangement ordered by store owner Scott Leadbetter, who acquired the business about a year and a half ago.

“Gotta love him,” Pinkham said when she learned the flowers were for her. “It helps to have a good manager and employer.”

Police, who are unclear whether the robbers fled the scene on foot or in a vehicle, are looking for two white males in their late 20s or early 30s.

One was described as 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighing 160 pounds. He was last seen wearing a dark green or brown coat, mirrored sunglasses and work boots.

The other man was described as about 5 feet 10 inches tall and was last seen wearing a dark-colored coat.

“I have nothing new to add,” Detective Sgt. Ward Gagner said Friday.

A composite drawing of one of the suspects published in Friday’s Bangor Daily News prompted about a dozen telephone calls, and police were following up various leads.

Gagner said people coming forward with possible leads represented “an encouraging sign. “It’s a sign that people are concerned. It’s a sign of a healthy community.”

Armed robbery — any violent crime for that matter — is “very, very rare” in Bangor, the detective added.

“I never, ever thought that it would happen here,” Pinkham said of the robbery. “We just live down the street.

“My kids are kind of scared. They know and are afraid the men might come back and hurt us,” she said.

On Friday afternoon, there was little to show that there had been an armed robbery, as it was more or less business as usual at the neighborhood store.

The only visible damage was a bent and slightly cracked shelf on a cigarette display case. Merchandise knocked over during the incident, a small pile of boxes containing Camel cigarettes and promotional baseball caps, had been restored to order.

The small store is frequented primarily by regulars — people who live in the neighborhood — and smokers from elsewhere lured by low-cost cartons of cigarettes, according to store manager Kendall Seavey.

“We’re very fortunate,” he said. “Money can be replaced, although not always easily. Human lives are another matter.”


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