A Night at the Robbery

From the time I finished my first two years of college until twelve years later, when I entered law school, I worked for Brookshire's grocery store.  I started in 1981 as a sacker (and 190 pounds) and left as a scanning coordinator (and 132) in 1993.  I met a lot of people who are still a part of my life then and I shared something with a small group that could have ended it.  Early in 1993, I believe it was, I was working overnight with the grocery manager and the stockers when Brookshire's was robbed.  The store closed about ten o'clock at night, but our crew worked overnight to get the store ready for another day.  The doors had been locked, but it wasn't unusual for one or more of the crew to unlock the doors and go out briefly for a smoke or to retrieve something from their car.

I remember sometime after midnight, the grocery manager calling all the crew to the front of the store.  When we got there, we had an unwelcome surprise.  A young black man with a knit ski mask was with the grocery manager and he had a gun. We gathered there near the checkstands looking toward the big front windows of the Brookshire's on North West and 8th Street.  We were told we were being robbed and the robber wanted us to cooperate.  He asked Robert, one of the stockers, to lead the way back to the freezed. Robert led and I brought up the rear.  The robber was just behind me.  Even though we weren't told to do so we raised our hands in stick 'em up fashion, apparently all thinking that's what you do when you're being robbed.  The robber told us immediately to put our hands down, and we did.  I can remember shivering badly and very noticeably.  The robber put the gun and his hand draped across my neck, but not in a threatening way.  The barrel of the gun was not on me for that instant.  The robber then whispered that he did not intend to kill us.  I was not sure.  But it was better than being told he did intend to.

Robert was the dairy and frozen food stocker and knew the difference between the freezer and the dairy cooler well. He led us straight to the dairy cooler, a place noticeably less cold than the freezer.  After the robber placed most of us in the cooler, he made the grocery manager go back up front with him to the office where the safe was.  But before they went, the robber put something in the latch of the cooler to keep us from opening the door.  While in the cooler, one of the guys wanted to try to either bust out and run, or at least try to jump the robber when he opened the door.  I didn't like either idea and thought either was likely to get somebody killed.  Luckily the others agreed with me and we simply spread out around the cooler to try to make it harder for him to shoot us all if he chose to start firing.

When the robber brought Jimmy, our grocery manager back to the cooler, we all waited to see what was going to happen to us.  The robber said something we didn't expect.  He said, "Which one of you has the red mustang out front? I want the keys."  I knew who owned it and thought he was going to hand them over, but no one said anything.  Then, I said, "I don't have a red mustang, but I have the gray one up front."  I took out my keys and tossed them to the robber.  He shut and jammed the door on us again.

We waited a moment to let him clear the area and then several of the guys forced the door open.  Jimmy and I made our way to the office while the others carefully went to the front doors and secured them.  Jimmy was grabbing one phone to call the police and told me to call the store manager.  I told him to tell the police the color, make and model of my mustang and I dialed the manager and told him what had happened.

When the police arrived they had each of us describe what happened.  In the course of doing so, I learned that Jimmy had told the police all about my car, but had not made it clear that it was an employee's car and not the robber's.  There were apparently two police cars sitting by my house waiting for me to come home with the loot.  Around the same time, other officers had looked for and found my car abandoned on another street.  Before everybody got the word that the car was mine, some officers were searching my car for evidence.  A little while later someone took me to my car and I was able to take it home.  The robber was never caught, but the police suspected one fellow and believed he had a history of trying to rob the same businesses more than once.  So on a few occasions I spent nights at the store accompanied by an officer with a rifle.  And on other nights I was provided an alarm necklace I wore that would allow me to send a silent alarm.

One of the other guys told me later that the gun was a revolver and (according to him) had hollow point bullets in it.  All I know is that this is the one time in my life I have been a victim, witness and suspect in an armed robbery.