The manager of a GameStop in Elmwood Park was robbed at gunpoint on Sept. 3, according to a police report. Police said the description of the men sought in the robbery matched those suspected to be involved “in a pattern of other similar robberies” at stores in Chicago, Indiana, Melrose Park and Northlake.
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Officers responded to a report of an armed robbery at 12:45 p.m. Sept. 3 at GameStop, 1710 N. Harlem Ave. Police said the store’s manager told police he had been behind the counter helping a customer when two men entered the store.
Once inside, the men approached the manager, and one of them pulled out a silver semi-automatic pistol and demanded the manager open the store’s safe, police said. The manager told them it would take too much time to open, so the men then demanded he open the cash register, police said. Once it was open, the men fled the scene with an unknown amount of cash, according to the police report.
“We’re very vigilant about our business district, but this took less than two minutes to happen,” Elmwood Park Police Chief Frank Fagiano said. “And since then, we’ve increased our patrols along the Harlem and North Avenue business areas.”
Fagiano said the two men were spotted on the store’s surveillance system, and officers were working with the FBI and Chicago police to identify and apprehend them.
In Northlake, an incident last month involved three men, and two matched the description of the men in the Elmwood Park armed robbery, according to police reports. Northlake officers responded to a report of retail theft at 1:35 p.m. Aug. 8 at the GameStop at 75 W. North Ave.
When they arrived, they spoke to a store employee who said that the three men entered and began looking around the store while she was behind the cash register. Eventually, one of the men asked the employee for help, and the employee left the cash register area to help him, police said. While helping that man, the employee saw another man leaving the cash register area that had been left unattended, the police report said.
The employee told that man he wasn’t allowed back there, and when the employee asked to check his pockets and threatened to call police, the man kept walking backward toward the exit, apologizing and patting his pockets in an attempt to show he didn’t have anything, police said. Once the men left the store, the employee looked behind the cash register and saw that three copies of Doom and four copies of GTA V, both for PlayStation 4, were missing. The video games had a total value of $359.93, according to police.
The Northlake GameStop manager was also able to make a copy of the store’s security footage, and police say the video shows the man backing away from the employee and attempting to hide the games in his shirt.
Alex V. Hernandez is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.