Customers stop Spring Lake robbery
SPRING LAKE, NC (WTVD) -- Warren Pharoah had just been in the Spring Lake Family Dollar earlier on Saturday asking for a job. He was told the store was not hiring, and he left.
So when the 17-year-old returned hours later demanding money, the cashiers thought it was a joke.
That was until he took a metal bat and smashed the credit card machine.
"That's when they say they became afraid for their life," said Detective Y. Shakir of the Spring Lake Police Department.
Two customers in the Skyland Shopping Center store weren't about to let anyone get hurt. Especially Marvin Sands, who was there shopping with his 2-year-old daughter and wife.
"You trying to rob the store with my family in there? You putting my family in danger?" Sands recalled thinking. "I take that sort of thing personal."
Surveillance video captures Sands and another man cornering the teen following the credit card machine smashing. Sands said when they heard the commotion at the front of the store just after 8:30 p.m., he and the other man kept their eyes on Pharoah. The cashiers had asked the teen if he was really going to try and rob them with customers in the store. When Pharoah, replied "he didn't care," Sands said he knew he had to do something.
Pharoah, noticing he was being watched, took the bat down an aisle before the men caught up with him. Sands told the female cashiers to call 911 as they moved in on Pharoah.
"The gentleman grabbed him on his shoulder, by his arm, and I grabbed him and I grabbed the weapon," Sands said.
Pharoah is seen slumping to the floor in the surveillance video keeping his head lowered as the men surround him awaiting police to arrive.
It's what you can't hear in the video that may have kept things under control.
"I made a statement 'I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to have to hurt you, but I will if I have to,'" said Sands. "So he sat down and I said, you know, 'What are you doing?' I asked him his age. I think he was about 17, almost 18, and I told him 'You're starting out the wrong way. This ain't what you should be doing," said Sands.
Pharoah told Sands he didn't know what he was doing. Sands said the teen's companions, possibly gang members Pharoah claimed to be associated with, had peered through the store window, but ran away after Sands stared them down.
Minutes later, police arrived.
"Somebody could've got hurt. Somebody could've got killed. Police could've come. He could've gotten shot, you understand?" asked Sands. "So the good thing is nobody got hurt. Everything ended peacefully, and hopefully he gets the help he needs so that doesn't happen again."
Pharoah was jailed in Cumberland County under a $20,000 bond. He faces an attempted armed robbery charge.
