A Rio Arriba County discount store received unwelcome visitors after employees had closed shop Monday night, when three masked men used guns to blast their way into the business.
The thieves, who ended up fleeing with several thousands of dollars in cash, were still at large as of Tuesday afternoon, according to the Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Office.
The gunmen targeted a Family Dollar store in Hernandez, on U.S. 84/285 north of Española, just moments after it had closed at 10 p.m. The doors were locked from the outside as employees remained in the store to count cash.
Just then, three armed men — two of them wearing Halloween masks and the other in a ski mask — shot several bullets through the store’s glass entrance doors, Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jake Arnold said.
The men stormed in and grabbed large amounts of cash from startled employees and ran off.
“I think the exact quote was ‘Give us the (expletive) money,’” said store manager Jenny Ramsay, who was there at the time. “Of course we did. It lasted about 40 seconds.”
None of the five employees was hurt.
“This was actually well-planned,” Arnold said, adding that the men were wearing latex gloves. “The money’s out there. They grab it. And they run. It was real quick.”
Arnold said that deputies who arrived on scene found shoe prints in the snow along CR 001, known to locals as Prince Drive. But the prints ended at a certain point, where the thieves probably jumped into their getaway car, according to Arnold.
Arnold also said that the weapons used in the holdup were a rifle and two handguns. Authorities found seven spent bullet casings around the store.
An exact dollar amount wasn’t available Tuesday night, but Arnold said “several thousands of dollars” in cash ended up being taken.
“That’s a store that typically deals in cash,” he said.
Arnold said investigators are in the process of reviewing in-store video surveillance tapes in hopes of finding clues that could lead them to the suspects. Arnold said one of the Halloween masks was of “an ugly guy in real long hair,” and that the masks were of recognizable characters.
“It wasn’t like Richard Nixon masks,” Arnold said.
Ramsay was doing well Tuesday, in spite of what had happened the night before.
“It is what it is,” she said. “I wouldn’t say it was traumatizing, but it startled me.”
Ramsay said that the store opened at its usual time Tuesday morning, but decided to “give everybody the day off who was there.”
Anyone with information on the robbery should contact the Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Office at 753-3329.
-- Email the reporter at vvela@abqjournal.com. Call the reporter at 505-992-6277
