LINCOLN PARK — A masked thief shot at a cashier's legs to convince him to "give me all the money" in an armed robbery shortly before midnight Sunday near the DePaul University campus.
"I'm closing Sunday night at 11:30," said Emtiyaz Wahra, employee at the Best Food Mart, 2451 N. Lincoln Ave., on Tuesday. "Before, at 11:15, these two guys come in in masks."
A third was outside in a car, Wahra said. One of the masked robbers took a position directly in front of the checkout counter in the small convenience store, the other to the side blocking the only entry or exit to the cashier.
That robber said, "Give me all the money."
To punctuate the point and hurry things along, Wahra said, "He fired at me at my legs." The bullet lodged in the back wall behind the checkout counter.
"I gave them the money and they go away," Wahra added. "It was over quick."
Wahra teared up slightly as he described the ordeal. He said nothing like that had ever happened before at the convenience mart, where he's worked eight years, although it had once been burglarized in an overnight break-in.
"Same car, different time," he said.
But Wahra said police also said security video of the Lincoln Park robbery would be helpful.
The store sits on a quiet stretch of Lincoln just up the street from the Biograph Theater and Lincoln Hall.
