The man who stole cash at gunpoint from Frazier Park Market Wednesday, Jan. 6 is in his “30s to early 40s,” according to Sergeant Mark Brown. He said a witness saw the suspect removing his wig, mustache and beard disguise as the gunman fled the store parking lot. He is described as a white male, about 5’9” with a slim to medium build and shaved head, wearing a gray or silver fleece shirt with a hood.

Some who viewed the video (www.MountainEnterprise.com) say it is possible that he may be among the 10 percent of Americans who are lefthanded. He held the gun in his right hand, but he used his left hand to gather cash from the register’s tray and fold it into his pocket.

A week later, the shock of the event can till be heard in the voices of employees at the store and those throughout town.

In an interview, Frazier Park Market Manager Rick Johnson said that just seeing the surveillance pictures of the robbery “gives me the chills. It definitely changes you…your heart starts beating fast…luckily [the cashier] did the right thing so nobody got hurt.”

The Frazier Park Market has been operating for over 50 years with no such incident.

“It is all a new thing for us,” Johnson said. “We’ve never been robbed before (besides a nighttime break-in)…especially someone with a gun. We don’t know whether it was somebody local or from out of town. We are making [the] changes we need to make here for our workers. You want to make sure everybody is safe.

“Maybe we have to think about winter hours, obviously the guy was waiting for it to get slow…That is an option we have to look at, close up maybe at 6 p.m. before it is so dark. But we don’t want to hurt our customer base, or inconvenience people…We’ll put in extra security cameras and take extra precautions….”

Johnson said that his sense of our rural town slips toward the vigilance of living in a big city: “You look around. You always have to take precautions when you drive in. It makes you think about who is walking beside you, behind you,” Johnson said.

Anyone with information on this event is asked to contact law enforcement at 245-3440 and the secret witness line is 322-4040.

This is part of the January 15, 2010 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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