Store clerk believes she was targeted in Gastonia robbery

GASTONIA, N.C. — Gastonia police are looking for a masked man involved a bizarre gas station robbery.

The store clerk thinks she may have been targeted because of a conversation she had earlier in the day, but her quick thinking stopped the robber from coming back for more.

Eyewitness News reporter Ken Lemon spoke to the victim at the Citgo on Kendrick Road about the terrifying moments.

The clerk said the man's voice sounded familiar as though he may have been in the store earlier that day.

She feels certain he knew that she had just got money back from tax returns.

"People are pretty crummy these days," clerk Tanis Cooke said.

Security cameras captured Cooke at the cash register of the Citgo Monday night, then a man walked across the parking lot slowly pulling a ski mask over his head.

The man wearing all black walked into the store just before closing and headed straight for the clerk behind the counter.

He didn't show a weapon, but he had a warning.

"He said, ‘Just stand there and you'll be fine,’" Cooke said.

She then pushed the panic button.

The man went through the open safe, found cash and asked if that was all she had, but he didn't take it.

"I thought it was odd," she said.

Instead he grabbed her purse and calmly walked out.

He found $30 in cash and then headed back towards the store, but Cooke had already locked the door.

"Started jerking it. He got mad and just pushed on it and then walked off," Cooke said. "There is no telling what he would have done had he got back in that store."

She wonders if the man overheard her say that last week she got a big tax return and he expected to find more money in the purse than he saw in the safe.

"It was like they just came in and looked in the safe to make it look like they were looking for money in the safe," she said.

Her manager agreed.

"He had the money," manager Julie Davis said.

But he didn’t want that money, she said.

"I think the target was her," Davis said.

He got her check card and her money is in the bank, but she called and had the card canceled before police arrived.

The robbery is under investigation.

Cox Media Group