Prepared Gas Station Owner Thwarts Robbery
BROOKLYN PARK (WCCO) -- Brooklyn Park Police arrested an armed robbery suspect early Wednesday morning after a brief chase that ended on Highway 169. A proactive gas station owner may be the reason they are behind bars.
Officers used their pursuit intervention technique to bump the car and then the suspect took running. Twenty-two-year old Philip Alvin Myers was quickly caught and now faces robbery charges.
Police say Myers robbed a clerk at the Mobil gas station at 9500 Noble Ave. N. as he was opening for business about 4:30 Wednesday morning. The store is equipped with sixteen surveillance cameras, which captured the robber who was in the store for about four minutes.
"He told Roger 'I have a gun' and cocked the trigger back and said, 'I will shoot you if you don't do what I say,'" said Craig Weitzel, the gas station owner.
The store also has live monitoring of it's cameras when it open and closes for business and police were quickly alerted to the crime. Officers were pulling up to the store when the robbery suspect took off in his vehicle and was caught a short time later.
Weitzel had briefed his employees on safety procedures after a Subway shop was robbed the day before by an armed gunman and a Brooklyn Park police officer stopped by with safety tips.
The shop is right next door to the gas station, which has never been the scene of a violent crime in the eight years Weitzen has owned it.
Weitzel said he was relieved the robber was caught. His main advice to his employees when faced with a robber with a gun: "Try not to be a hero."
The two Brooklyn Park stick-ups happened a after a rash of similar armed robberies in the metro area. Investigators from other police agencies will take a close look at the latest cases to see if there could be any connections.
WCCO-TV's Caroline Lowe Reports
