A lone gunman entered the Aurora Avenue North K-Mart store (Seattle, WA) on Saturday, February 25, 2012, near closing time, found a place to hide and waited until the store was nearly empty before he went to the office at the back of the store, and after brandishing a handgun, demanded money from the safe. According to the police report, the store manager, assistant manager and a clerk were the only remaining persons in the office. This happened around 9: 07 PM, which was only minutes after the store closed at 9: 00PM. Afterwards, it seems that the store manager and robber wrestled with one another and the manager got shot in the chest. The struggle continued between the two and moved to the front of the store where the manager, though critically wounded, was able to knock the gun out of the robber’s hand. In the meantime, the clerk dialed 911 the assistant manager was able to retrieve the firearm and ran outside, awaiting the arrival of police officers. The store manager was taken to Harborview Medical Center where he underwent surgery to remove his spleen and is scheduled for another surgery, but he is in stable condition as of Sunday morning, according to the police.
This is a relatively positive outcome from what could have been a much worse scenario, but some serious questions need to be asked, namely, what is the corporate policy regarding what is the responsible behavior or guidelines recommended when confronted with someone who robs the store and carries a firearm; is the employee to resist or not? Did the manager give the robber money from the safe as he requested, and then have reason to fear, by way of direct threat, implication or body language that the gunman was going to shoot him and his subordinates anyway? If such was the case then his struggle with the robber might have been justified, if not to protect himself, then at the very least to preoccupy the robber so that the others could perhaps get to safety and call the police.
It is curious that this incident happened within such a short time window (seven minutes) because there are usually customers in most retail stores after closing time as well as hourly workers and department managers who still have work to do. When the store closes managers make a final inspection of their departments and throughout the store and check for any thing out of the ordinary, so the robber must have found a really good hiding place. This is in addition to all the hidden cameras strategically placed in the store which are monitored by Asset Protection (store security), which is usually staffed by more than one person so it would be interesting to know what surveillance footage found; or more importantly, how the person was able to evade a system that costs the store thousands of dollars (including personnel) on a monthly basis; which apparently failed in this case. No doubt there will be an internal investigation, as there should be, and some kind of changes will be made at this store to prevent a future recurrence of this type of unfortunate incident from happening again.
Robert Randle
776 Commerce St. #B-11
Tacoma, WA 98402
February 28, 2012
Robertrandle51@yahoo.com
