BETHLEHEM, Pa. -
Police are investigating whether three gas station robberies in the Lehigh Valley this past weekend were carried out by the same men.
In the first two cases, the robbers got away with cash and merchandise. But in the third stickup, the gas station attendant fought back-- and won.
Surveillance video from the gas station in Bethlehem shows what happened in the Sunday night attempted robbery. Two men entered the station's convenience store a few minutes before 11 p.m., a gun leading their way. Both men were wearing bandannas to hide their faces, and gloves to guard against fingerprints. Then the guy with the gun quickly turned back around toward the door, the gun still pointed at the counter. Both men left in a rush, without taking a dime.
Another camera captured the scene from a different angle. As the robbers turned and ran toward the door, the attendant was raising a golf club over his shoulder, ready to swing.
The night before though, two guys with similar descriptions and a similar M-O did get away with cash and cigarettes at a Bethlehem gas station a couple of miles away.
"The short guy had a bandanna across the face, the other guy a muffler or something like that in his face, covering his face," A.J. Sharma, the gas station attendant, told FOX 29. As in the attempted robbery a night later, the bigger guy had the gun. "Small guy jump from the table and come back, said money, but I tried to give him money, he said no, I take it," Sharma explained.
The attendant says the smaller guy had a bag ready to load with cash and stolen items. While he went to work, the gunman kept his weapon trained on Sharma. "The other guy come, he say okay you stand up in the back and just relax," Sharma explained. "The other guy took money, cigarettes, cash, this and that, everything." Two customers walked into the store during that robbery, and the gunman took their money too.
Police haven't linked any of the crimes, but a gas station robbery in Allentown Saturday night happened about an hour after the Bethlehem robbery at Sharma's gas station.
The M-O sounds the same in all three, and so does the description of the robbers, so police in both towns are working together to try to catch the men.
This surveillance image shows the suspect in a Lehigh Valley gas station robbery over the weekend.
