The northbound lanes of U.S. 52 in West St. Paul were blocked for nearly a half-hour Monday night while police arrested at gunpoint five teenage boys who were suspected of using force to rob a Verizon Wireless store in Inver Grove Heights.
Police later learned the teens, ages 16 and 17, had allegedly grabbed an iPad and iPhone from the store and assaulted a customer who tried to stop one of them, Police Chief Paul Schnell said.
Police were called to the Cellular Connection, at the northeast corner of Concord Boulevard and Cahill Avenue, at 6:45 p.m. by a store clerk reporting a robbery in progress. The clerk feared it was a stickup because some of the teens had sweatshirt hoods pulled over their heads to hide their faces, Schnell said.
As the teens ran from the store, a 27-year-old Inver Grove Heights man grabbed one of them in an attempt to stop him from leaving, Schnell said. Another of the teens ran back into the store and hit the man, who let go of the teen he was holding.
Officers from Inver Grove Heights, West St. Paul and South St. Paul, as well as the Minnesota State Patrol, stopped the suspects’ car a short time later on northbound U.S. 52, near the Butler Avenue exit in West St. Paul, and arrested them without incident. Charges are pending, Schnell said.
In August, the store was the scene of a stickup in which a clerk shot and critically wounded a robbery suspect, 32-year-old Jamaal Marquie Mays. Mays and his alleged accomplice, Jaquon Keshawn Moman, 25, were charged with federal crimes.