A 19-year-old man placed a note on the counter of a jewelry store in Canela, Brazil, then pulled a gun on the shopkeeper. That doesn’t sound like an atypical way to begin a holdup…except that the attempted robbery was carried out by a man in a wheelchair who doesn’t have the use of his hands.
The teen, who can’t speak, had been in the store for ten minutes before making his move. The note said “Hand off everything. Don’t raise attention.”
The robber used his feet to hold a gun on the man behind the counter. Note that the other customer in the store doesn’t seem phased at all by what’s going on, appearing to apply hand sanitizer while continuing to casually browse the display cases.
The good news: all involved were wearing face masks and appeared to maintain proper social distancing.
From the Daily Mail:
‘Then he pulled the gun out with his feet. That pistol looked real,’ the worker said, according to Brazilian news outlet Metropoles. ‘A guy back there saw it and called 911.’
The police arrived and arrested the teenager, who was also in possession of a knife.
A family member appeared at the police precinct and assisted the police in questioning the teen due to his disability before he was released from custody.
The would-be thief was released?
‘It must be considered that, given the elements initially brought to the police station, it would possibly be an impossible crime to be consummated, especially if you considered the physical condition of the [person being] investigated, also due to the unlikelihood of escape,’ [City delegate Vladimir] Medeiros said.
Oh. It’s probably a good thing for the man in the wheelchair that no one who worked in the store was armed.