Boy, 12, charged in shop robbery

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A 12-year-old boy charged with robbing a South Side sandwich shop was taken to the Martin P. Joyce Juvenile Justice Center after police apprehended him in a foot pursuit and found a loaded .22-caliber pistol on him.

Clerks at the Subway sandwich shop, 830 E. Midlothian Blvd., told police the seventh-grader entered the business at 4:14 p.m. Sunday wearing a ski mask and all-black attire, carrying a Nike handbag and brandishing a pistol.

One of the clerks reported the boy pointed a handgun at her, went behind the counter and ordered her to “Put all the money in the bag.”

She told police she then opened the cash drawer and yelled for another clerk, who came from the back of the store and saw what was happening.

The boy took the cash drawer out of the register and put all the bills in the bag, the clerks told police.

He ordered the clerks at gunpoint to open the safe under the counter, then tried unsuccessfully to open it himself after the clerks said they couldn’t open it, the clerks told police.

The robber fled through an apartment complex behind the shop, the clerks said, and police said they spotted him at Gibson Street and Palmer Avenue, gave chase and apprehended him on Detroit Avenue, just west of Gibson.

Police said they took from the boy a .22-caliber pistol with five live rounds, a Nike bag, a hooded sweat shirt, a ski mask, a cellular phone and $39.

The clerks identified the boy as the robber and the Nike bag as the one he was carrying, police said.

During the chase, an officer fired her Taser, but the darts missed him. The boy, who listed an address on East Boston Avenue, is formally charged with aggravated robbery and having a dangerous weapon in his control and possession.