New Haven Independent

The robber held up the restaurant around noon. All the restaurant’s employees tore outside, leaving him behind.

By the time the cops showed up, they couldn’t take any chances. So they blocked off the streets; officers staked nearby positions. A mobile unit was called in. The state cops arrived with a police dog. Eventually the local police SWAT team — aka “SERT” (for Special Emergency Response Team) — arrived.

“Is he in there? I don’t know. We have to assume he’s in there because no one saw him go out. That’s the problem,” said Sgt. Jo Schaller (pictured at the scene).

Officers at the Winthrop and Sherman intersections redirected car and foot traffic to side streets. A small crowd gradually gathered at the periphery to join cops in waiting to see if the gunman was in fact still inside and might emerge.

Click on the play arrow below to watch some young men giddily recount how the cops had shooed them from the scene.

After close to four hours, the police entered the KFC around 3:30, according to Sgt. Greg Catania. No one was there. The robber had fled.