Markeshia RIcks Photo
On Saturday, a man with a gun went into the Westville Quality Market and demanded money — the third time in just over a year that the store at the corner of Alden Avenue and West Elm Street has been robbed at gunpoint.
This robbery happened Saturday afternoon, according to a report written by New Haven Police Officer Christopher Stroscio.
A 23-year-old store clerk told Stroscio he was behind the counter when a man he didn’t know entered “brandishing a black semiautomatic weapon.” The man with the gun walked behind the counter and pointed the gun at the clerk demanding that he open the register.
Stroscio wrote that once the register drawer was open, the man with the gun took all the money. Then, the robber demanded that the clerk “give him the extra money,” referring to the cash reserve that the store keeps on hand for making change. The clerk pointed it out to the robber and he took all of that money and then helped himself to eight cartons of Newport cigarettes.
The robber then told the clerk to lay down on the ground and face away from him or he would shoot him. The clerk told police that the man was wearing a white and brown hoodie, a black mask covering his face and gloves. He is estimated to be about six feet tall with a skinny build. He took approximately $700 from the register and another $400 from the change fund.
When supervisor Sgt. Brian McDermott arrived on the scene he contacted the Investigation Services Bureau. Several officers conducted a canvass. After the store’s owner arrived, he accessed the store’s security camera system. It showed the would-be robber walking west from West Elm Street to the store, and then robbing the store at gunpoint as the clerk had described to officers in his statement to police.
Detectives took a copy of the footage. They determined that there was no physical evidence to collect because the subject wore gloves. Officer Stroscio and Officer Diamond Dickerson followed up with a door-to-door canvass of neighbors.
Two masked men, one armed with a gun, robbed the market in December 2016 with customers in the store. It was robbed again in November 2017 while customers — a woman and her child — were in the store. That robbery initially wasn’t reported but police followed up with the customer and provided access to Yale Child Study counseling services. All of the robberies have happened in the mid to late afternoon.
Westville top cop Lt. Manmeet Colon said it’s possible that it’s the same man or men working the area. But other than the surveillance video, the police don’t have much to go on because the robber concealed his identity and left behind no fingerprints. The police are asking people to report if they saw anyone or happen to have video footage from that night that might be helpful. (Call 203 – 946-6304.) In the meantime, police patrols of the area have been stepped up, a precaution that Westville Alder Adam Marchand said in an email to constituents Sunday, that he had requested.
“Fortunately, no one was physically harmed,” Marchand wrote of the third most recent robbery.