Target Clerk Feared for Her Life Facing Knife-Wielding Thief

A young store clerk was left in tears after a smooth-talking man got her to open a locked case and then threatened her with a knife before grabbing $3,500 worth of Apple iPads and running out a fire exit.

According to police reports:

At 9:51 p.m. Monday, police were called to Target, 3900 N. 124^th St., on a report of an armed robbery involving a knife.

An 18-year-old clerk said she had seen the suspect with a shopping cart in the electronics department near the iPads, which are kept in a locked case. He motioned to her to come over to him and began asking technical questions about the iPad, specifically the 32GB product.

When he told her he wanted to buy one, she unlocked the case and took one out. She told police that she felt comfortable and unworried about the man at the moment, but when she turned around with the iPad, she found the man holding a silver folding knife with a 4- to 5-inch blade.

She told police that he said, “I swear to God, do not say anything.” The clerk said she feared for her life and handed over the iPad she was holding. She said the suspect then took a backpack from his cart, knelt in the aisle and loaded four more iPads into it.

She said she lost sight of the knife while he was doing this but heard him talking to someone on the phone. When he had put all five iPads into the backpack, he ran along the back wall of the store and out through a fire exit.

A loss prevention employee first noticed the suspect as he was running. She also ran to the back of the store and found the clerk in tears, then ran to the exit, but by the time she looked behind the store, no one was around.

The suspect was seen on video footage getting into a waiting sedan driven by a second party who could not be described. Footage from inside the store showed the man getting a shopping cart, then putting the backpack into it from a display in one area of the store before heading to the electronics section.

Once there, the interaction between the suspect and the clerk was partially obscured by merchandise displays. Neither the knife nor the actual theft could be seen.

Earlier footage from outside the front of the store showed the suspect approaching from the direction of the neighboring McDonald's restaurant.

Another Target clerk noticed the suspect and her colleague in the iPad aisle and felt that something was amiss from the way the two were standing stiffly, but she did not see the knife or the theft in progress.

Based on interviews with both clerks and video confirmation, police described the suspect as a light-skinned African-American man from 18 to 22 years old, about 5 feet, 8 inches tall, weighing from 150 to 170 pounds. He was wearing black jeans and shirt and a black-and-white plaid jacket.

The retail value of the five iPads was about $3,500. Based on that value – greater than $2,500 – the suspect would have been subject to a charge of Class I felony theft under state criminal statutes, punishable by no more than 3 1/2 years in prison, had he merely made off with the merchandise.

But because he used a knife in the act, police are investigating the crime as an armed robbery, a considerably more serious Class C felony, punishable by up to 40 years in prison.