The owner of a gas station in Oakland, California, was the victim of a flash mob robbery on Friday when dozens of criminals ransacked his store, leaving the police response reportedly taking hours.
“My aunts and uncles, [how] “The United States is a place to go and it’s horrifying that this happened. This should not happen,” Sam Maadai, a Yemeni migrant whose shop suffered about $100,000 in damage, told Fox News on Sunday.
“It’s unbelievable,” he added.
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Pictured (left) is a flash mob vandalising a petrol station in Oakland, with owner Sam Mardai on the right. (KTVU/Fox & Friends Weekend)
According to the New York PostMulday estimates that between 80 and 100 people attending a nearby car freak show broke into the gas station last week, smashing shelves and stealing everything they could get their hands on, including $25,000 in the cash register.
According to reports, the perpetrators were upset because the 24-hour store only provided counter services at night.
The entire incident was captured on camera and shows the culprit stealing items from the refrigerator, grabbing items from behind the counter and stealing items from the shelves.
Mulday told “Fox & Friends Weekend” that he’d worked for 10 months since the store opened to build up a customer base, but in an hour that was all destroyed.
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The image, captured by FOX affiliate KTVU, shows a thief stealing items from the store’s refrigerator. (KTVU)
According to the Post report, Mulday claims that it took police nine hours to respond to his call for help. He reiterated his dissatisfaction with the police response on Sunday, slamming it as “unacceptable.”
“We haven’t had any response from them,” he said, adding that he plans to meet with the local police chief on Wednesday.
“I received no excuses or apologies from them. [for] “They didn’t show up, they didn’t even have the courtesy to show up. I would understand if it was an hour or two after it happened, but they didn’t come until 2:30, which is when they showed up,” he added.
Two employees were inside the store at the time of the incident and were threatened by the suspects. According to FOX 2Affiliates based in California’s Bay Area, including Oakland.
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In a statement to FOX 2, local police said they “responded approximately 90 minutes later to a report of a theft at the nearby 76th Gas Station and initially ranked the crime as a priority 2, meaning there were no suspects on scene and the crime can be reported online.”
The media also reported that after video of the incident was sent to local police, they rated the crime as priority 1 and dispatched officers to the scene.
Local police also told the news outlet they were responding to entertainment at the nearby airport.
Fox News had previously reached out to local police for comment.
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Fox News’ Bree Stimson contributed to this report.
