By Matthew Monks
A blue-eyed, blond woman in her 20s robbed $86 from the Grand Avenue burger joint with nothing more than a napkin and some guts, a witness said.
In the middle of a lunchtime rush at 12:30 p.m., she handed the cashier a brown napkin stating, “Open the drawer. Give me the money. I have a gun,” according to Lisa Tecarr, the cashier.
“The 'money' and 'gun' were underlined. There were like four exclamation points at the end,” Tecarr said. “I looked up to her as if to say 'are you joking?'”
She wasn't. The woman never said a word and kept her right hand stuffed in her jean-jacket pocket, alluding to a concealed weapon, Tecarr said.
The restaurant was packed with people, including several infants, Tecarr said.
“I said to myself, 'What if she did have a gun?'” she said. “I'm not a hero. I don't want anyone to be hurt.”
So she handed over the contents of her register – a couple of twenties and dozens of singles, she said.
The woman then bolted from the restaurant, with Tecarr hollering at her manager, “I've just been robbed!”
They ran out to the front of the store and watched the woman dash across Grand Avenue, nearly getting run over by a car in the process. She climbed into the driver's side of a gray van parked a short distance away on the corner of 69th Place and drove away, Tecarr said.
Tecarr and the manager called the police, who took the cashier to the precinct to go over mug shots. Tecarr said she picked out a suspect police told her has robbed other stores before.
Tecarr, who has been a cashier at the restaurant for three months, said the incident shook her up, bringing her to tears shortly after the robber fled. She said the woman, who took no measure to conceal her face, really caught her off guard.
“She did not look like a criminal, she did not look like a drug addict – anything like that,” Tecarr said. “She was very brazen and bold the way she did it. We had a store full of people.”
Reach reporter Matthew Monks by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
