Imagine being robbed at gunpoint for $7.
Police said that is all two men got away with during an armed robbery at the Mini-Mart on Greenwood Avenue in New Haven around 7 p.m. on Saturday.
The mini-mart has been robbed twice in the past year and the one that occurred on Saturday was caught on surveillance camera.
Police said two men, with their weapons blazing, intended to rob and do harm to the three men working and playing dominoes inside.
The video shows one employee, Angel Barrera, running to the back of the store and into the freezer during the robbery. One of the robbers filed a single shot at him, according to police.
“The way they shot at him, they looked like they were going to come and do some serious damage,” Wander Morel, owner of the Mini-Mart, said. “This man could've gotten shot for $7.”
The other two men cowered in fear as the bandits struggled with the register and only mustered the $7 on top of it.
If the thieves had broken into the register itself, they would have walked out of here with just $107, Morel said.
He knows just about everyone who walks into his store, but couldn't identify the men who stole from him because of their disguises.
One was wearing a gray sweat suit with the hood cinched tightly around his face. The other man also wore a gray sweatsuit and had a black ski mask on.
“I can't trust anybody. I look at everybody different now, you know?" Morel said. "I still got to wake up and get through the day because I have to pay my bills. I got to pay rent."
Morel believes the robbers have been to his store before because they knew no one was behind the register at the time and were in and out of the place in less than a minute.
However, Morel is more focused on providing for his 10-month-old daughter.
“I can't even imagine if she had been in the store,” he said. “I don't really like to talk about that.”
Morel said he should have been working at the store the night of the robbery but was not there because he had to cover his father's store in New Haven.
