HARLINGEN — It started as a regular morning making doughnuts at Shipley’s.
But before the sun was even up, some customers who didn’t just ask for a sugar doughnut and a cup of coffee changed all that.
Three men were arrested early yesterday morning after one man left the store on 77 Sunshine Strip with the cash register in hand. Police will not release their identities until after they are arraigned today.
Shipley Do-nuts’ store owner Raymond Hout didn’t think twice about stopping the man who left the store with his cash register.
“I looked at him and he had no weapon,” Hout said. “He just had two guys with him, so I tried to stop him.”
Hout said he asked the robber to stop and not to take his cash register.
Hout pinned the robber down with his knees after his nephew Heng Taing, 24, pushed him down.
“I had grabbed him and twisted his arm and told him don’t move or I will hurt you,” Hout said.
Hout had cut off the robber by running out the back door in an attempt to catch him.
He said the robber attempted to push past him by shoving him with the register in his hands.
“In a couple of minutes the cops came and helped me,” Hout said. “The cops were super fast.”
“It was kind of suspicious,” said Cristina Garcia, 20, a Shipley’s cashier.
She said she noticed their vehicle had been parked at the front of the store and then circle around it before the men entered the building.
She said she yelled at Hout to signal to him a man was walking out with the register.
Video surveillance shows a man ripping the cash register off the store counter.
Hout was just feet away in the back preparing the morning batch of kolaches.
Garcia said the robber did not demand the money, he just grabbed the cash register and attempted to walk out with it.
“He walked slow and looked like he was drunk, or was on drugs,” Garcia said. “He tried to get out as fast as he could.”
Garcia said the register had $160.
“The experience was scary and unexpected,” Garcia said.
