Whole Foods store robbed at gunpoint for $60,000

Sunday, November 03, 2013 by: B. Pierson
Tags: Whole Foods, robbery, gunpoint

(NaturalNews) Three workers at the Bowery Whole Foods Market in New York City's Lower East Side were moving cash in their store on Sunday night when they became victims of an unexpected ordeal. A manager, another employee and a security guard used the store's elevator to transport $60,000 held in a shopping cart from the first floor to the second floor at around 10 p.m. When the elevator reached the second floor, the employees were shocked to see the threat facing them.

Two robbers, armed with guns, were there waiting for the elevators doors to open. One of the men ordered the employees to get on the ground, while the other one tied one employee's hands behind his back. The two thieves then took the money, left through a service door and made there escape running south on Chrystie Street.

"I can confirm that Sunday night, Whole Foods Market's Bowery store at 95 East Houston Street in New York City was robbed at gunpoint," Whole Foods spokesperson Michael Sinatra told The Observer, "Whole Foods Market has no additional confirmed details at this time."

"They ran from the receiving door which no one outside the store knows about," one store worker said according to the New York Post. "They know parts of the store that we only know." This and the fact that the robbers knew when and where to be to make off with an easy $60,000 has led some to speculate that the robbery could have been an inside job.

As reported by the New York Post, another employee "claimed to see one of the men casing the store a few weeks ago wearing the same 'dreadlocks and bad, fake beard.'"

Police have described the gunman as being six feet tall and wearing a brown coat and his hair in dreadlocks. The other robber also had dreadlocks in his hair and wore a black sweater. Both suspects were caught on security cameras. In the still frames, the suspects appear to be African American; however, it is hard to be certain because of the fuzzy video quality. As one commenter from dnainfo.com said, "they look like they're wearing black face and fake dread wigs."

Thankfully, no one was hurt during this incident. New York is subject to some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, which makes it extremely difficult, and in some cases impossible, for law-abiding citizens to own and carry a firearm. "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights plainly reads, leaving little to "interpretation." Yet, this right, this individual liberty which was once held as sacrosanct, is continuously infringed upon, and only at the consequence of taking away the citizens' right to defend themselves, their homes and their businesses. Without a means to defend themselves, citizens have no choice but to depend on the police to save them. And since the police have a monopoly on protecting the weak and defenseless, they don't have to compete with other defense organizations. In a capitalist, free-market system, like what we pretend to have, businesses must compete with one another to provide the best service at the lowest price in order to keep their customers. But with guns banned for all but police, and with other forms of protection outlawed, citizens are forced to pay taxes, "protection money," that go to the police, who can then act at their own discretion.

Gun control laws don't work because criminals don't care about them. If someone is already going to commit an armed robbery, they aren't going to suddenly drop their guns because someone trashed the Second Amendment. A 2007 study from Harvard University proved that strict gun control laws correlate with higher rates of gun deaths and that increased gun ownership actually decreases that rate. Despite this, liberals ignore this evidence and continue to push for stricter gun control laws, making no attempt to justify legislation that is actually detrimental to freedom and public safety. Instead, they persist in fallaciously equating increased gun ownership to increased death and crime. Of course, the "No Guns Allowed" sign outside the Whole Foods store obviously doesn't make a difference in deterring armed criminals either.

Sources used in this article include:

http://www.law.harvard.edu

http://www.dnainfo.com

http://nypost.com

http://observer.com

http://www.archives.gov