Gunmen Cut Through Roof to Rob Business

PASADENA — In what Pasadena police called an unusual crime, two masked gunmen cut a hole in a roof last weekend to enter a local check cashing business, where they handcuffed and gagged two employees before fleeing with $5,000.

“We’ve had roof burglars” who have cut holes in roofs to burglarize businesses after-hours, police Lt. Van Anthony said. “But we’ve never had anybody cut a hole in a roof as a means of doing an armed robbery.”

Anthony said that sometime Friday night or early Saturday the robbers cut a hole in the roof and ceiling over the back office of Big Ben’s Check Cashing in the 400 block of East Orange Grove Avenue.

The men hid in the space between the roof and the ceiling until the business opened Saturday morning, then--armed with handguns and wearing ski masks--dropped into the office, surprising a female employee, Anthony said.

The men took about $5,000 from an open safe and demanded at gunpoint that the woman open the firm’s other safes. When she responded that she did not know the combinations, the robbers handcuffed her and gagged her with duct tape.

Moments later, a second employee wandered into the office, and the robbers demanded that she open the safes. When the woman declined, she too was cuffed and gagged.

The robbers took what money they had and escaped by climbing back through the hole in the roof, Anthony said.