Police seek suspect in armed robbery at Sheldon's Market
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By Cristina Kumka Staff Writer - Published: June 20, 2009
PAWLET — An armed robbery at Sheldon's Market in Pawlet on Friday afternoon has police searching for a suspect who flashed a gun, pepper-sprayed the store's 17-year-old clerk and then fled with a register full of cash.
Police say a man with a reddish beard in his 20s walked into the Sheldon's Market off Route 30 at about 3:30 p.m. and demanded cash from the young store clerk.
He brandished a gun as he did it, according to state police Detective Sgt. Samuel Capogrossi.
According to Lynn Sheldon, the store's owner, the unknown man grabbed all the cash in the register before spraying the clerk in the face with pepper spray so she couldn't see which way he planned to flee.
At the market shortly after the robbery, Capogrossi said police did not know if the man fled on foot or in a vehicle.
The clerk was treated by first responders from Granville Rescue in Granville, N.Y., for skin irritation and other minor injuries, but was not taken to the hospital.
Police describe the suspect as between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 9 inches, in his 20s with a red chin-strap beard and about 200 pounds. He was wearing a black baseball cap and a hooded sweatshirt.
Minutes after the robbery, state troopers formed a road block just north of Waite Hill Road, questioning anyone that fit the description and later, continued to canvass the quiet neighborhoods surrounding the store.
Sheldon, whose family has owned the store for three generations, said her mother was robbed at gunpoint when she worked there in 1991. That time, the robber was caught, she said.
This latest incident has her considering getting a surveillance camera. Sheldon said the amount of money taken is "enough to hurt a small store like this."
"It's nerve racking … but it's a family business," she said, tending to customers as they walked into the store buying chips, sodas and asking what all the police were doing in town.
If anyone has information on the armed robbery at Sheldon's Market, call state police at 773-9101.
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