GASTONIA, N.C.,None — A small army of police scoured a wooded area in Gastonia Monday for two men who pulled off a startling crime.
The robbers ambushed workers at a Food Lion and then held several customers at gunpoint.
•SLIDESHOW: Robbers Drop Through Ceiling Of Gastonia Food Lion
"It's just crazy that people would stoop to these levels," Jennifer Auten, who pulled up to the store just after the crime occurred, said.
Now, Auten is thankful she got a late start to her grocery shopping.
"I would have been inside with all four of my kids," she said.
Police said the two men, armed with handguns, masked and dressed in black, broke in through the store's roof overnight.
"They were ready for us when we came in," an employee who opened the store Monday morning said.
After taking the employees to the back of the store, police said the men turned on unsuspecting customers who came in to do their shopping. Officers said there were about 10 customers inside at the time of the robbery.
"It is pretty brazen, because [having a lot of people inside] increases your chances that somebody is going to fight back," Capt. Cindy Isenhour from the Gastonia Police Department said.
The robbers took everyone's cell phones and even locked some of the victims in a delivery truck.
Now, police are looking into the possibility that this crime could be connected to a Bojangles robbery that happened at the end of December. In that instance, armed robbers broke through the roof of the fast-food restaurant and robbed the store as employees came to work.
They were never caught.
WSOC
