INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) – Employees at a local cell phone store hope they’ve seen the last of hold-ups after getting hit two days in a row by robbers.
The second armed robbery happened late Tuesday morning at the South East Street AT&T store with the manager inside. The manager visited the store to help clean up from the robbery on Memorial Day.
Surveillance video shows three robbers rush into AT&T on Memorial Day and order the employee to the back so they could steal brand new cell phones. Some new devices range in price from $800 to $1,300 per phone.
The video cameras also captured the trios getaway showing their faces covered up.
The manager involved in the second robbery is Derek Elsrod who works at the Midwest Sales Vice President for the franchise company.
“We were just cleaning up from the robbery we had yesterday,” said Elsrod.
Elsrod shared what went down during the robbery while he was in the store. The suspect didn’t waste any time making his intentions known.
“He had a pistol or gun of some sort, came in with store manager and took him back and proceeded to go through the safe and told us to stay froze more or less,” said Elsrod.
The mobile phone franchise company has had close to a dozen robberies alone at stores across the metro area. The company has also learned about other franchise companies dealing with the same crime spree.
They are urging local police departments to help put a stop to the robberies before an employee or customer gets seriously hurt or worse.
Racquel Woods visited the AT&T store Tuesday afternoon and got a huge surprise that the business was closed down with police cars all over the parking lot.
“I am just glad I was here when it happened,” said Racquel Woods.
Just like store managers, Woods, who stopped to buy her mother a cell phone, is concerned about people getting hurt. She keeps tabs on the crime trends in Indianapolis because she has family that call the circle city home.
But the last thing she would want is to be inside a cell phone store during a dangerous hold-up.
“I have concern for my safety," said Woods. "I am originally from Indy, I live in Los Angeles now, but I have been concerned about things in the city overall.”
“The longer it goes on the more opportunity of somebody getting hurt,” said Elsrod.
Immediately after Tuesday's hold-up, metro officers tracked an adult and juvenile suspect to the intersection of Iowa and Draper streets. The officer executed a traffic stop on the suspects.
FBI agents executed a search warrant on their get away car.
An IMPD evidence officer took photographs of the items inventoried during the search warrant.
But since there are possibly multiple robbery rings hitting cell phone stores, some of the stores will change the way they do business.
“Anything we can do because the longer this goes on the more opportunity there is of somebody getting hurt one way or another and that's what we want to prevent,” Elsrod said. “We are going to keep our doors locked until we see people approach.”
Even though the two suspects for this robbery are in custody there are countless other robberies police agencies across the metro area still are working to solve.
Anyone with information about any of the cell phone store robberies can call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 317-262-TIPS.