Westville Quality Market On Guard After Robbery

Prakunj Patel was doing his normal job behind the counter at the Westville Quality Market when two men showed up to rob the store.

“I was talking to my customer,” the owner of the market on Alden Avenue recalled Monday. ​“I had two of my friends visiting also. It was four of us in the store.”

The two masked robbers showed up at around 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the store, one of the few places within the Westville neighborhood where people can walk to buy milk, bread and eggs. On weekends, neighborhood kids often ride their bikes or skateboard to the store with their friends to get chips, drinks and candy.

On this evening, one of the robbers showed the men in the store what looked like a ​“pump-action shotgun,” Patel told police. He came around the counter and demanded that Patel open the register. The people inside the store were ordered to gather together in one spot.

“They took all the money and my wallet,” Patel said.

Patel told police that the armed man ​“raised the shotgun and pointed it at him,” according to a press release from the police department. He ordered Patel to raise his hands and step aside. Patel told police the unarmed member of the robbing duo acted as the lookout at the front door as the shotgun toting man made his way behind the counter.

“He couldn’t figure out how to open the register drawer,” Officer David Hartman, police department spokesman, wrote in the release. ​“He ordered Patel over to open it. Patel complied, pleading with the man to take the money and otherwise, leave them alone.”

A customer Patel had been talking to stood at the counter with his arms raised, according to Hartman. He kept repeating to robbers that he was calling the police. The robbers disregarded his warning and took the cash from the register before addressing the others in the shop.

Two of Patel’s friends were standing, arms up, at the end of the counter, Hartman wrote. The robbers took their wallets, but gave one of the wallets back after finding it empty of cash. The robber took that man’s cell phone instead.

One customer arriving at the time saw the robbers dash out of the store, hop in a car, and ​“tear around West Elm” Street away from the scene. Police arrived soon after. They had the witnesses stay inside the store for an hour while they interviewed them; the store was closed to customers during that time.

The customer told police that the getaway car appeared to be an older, silver or gold four-door sedan. He thought it was a Pontiac or Saturn. He watched as they took off, east on West Elm Street, according to Hartman.

​“The description of the vehicle matched one police suspected was involved in two Fair Haven robberies a day earlier. An officer who’d investigated one of them suspected it may have been a stolen car listed on his ​‘Hot-Sheet’,” Hartman wrote. ​“At 6:04 p.m., after those marker numbers had been transmitted to cops in the area, Officers Endri Dragoi and David Tarantino found themselves behind it at Sherman Avenue and Gilbert Street. A pursuit soon followed as the driver refused orders to pull over. The car was stolen. The driver pulled over briefly on Derby Avenue – then sped off again. The perps eventually got away.”

Hartman added that as forensic investigators processed the scene of the crime, officers were dispatched at 7:34 p.m. to the 200 block of Blake Street after a resident reported seeing a car, abandoned and left running, behind a building. It was the stolen car suspected to have been used in the earlier robberies.

Police are still looking for the robbers. Post robbery, Patel said in an interview Monday, he feels one emotion: anger.

“They come and rob your for their pleasure,” he said. ​“But what they don’t see is that this person is working here every day, all day and you’re coming in taking their money. I don’t get that.”

The men who robbed the store were masked, so Patel said he and the other men in the store were unable to give detailed descriptions to the police.

In addition to having to spend about an hour talking to the police, Patel said, he had to cancel all his credit cards, which was a hassle. But cancelling them brought him a small measure of satisfaction, knowing that if the crooks tried to use them they would be declined.

He said, however, that the robbery has changed him.

“It’s not the same anymore,” he said. ​“Before, I’d just be normal. Now, every five minutes I’m looking outside.”

But Patel said he’s not ready to quit the business. He’s just ready to add more surveillance around the store in hopes that it will either deter any future robberies, or at the very least give him a heads up on who’s coming in the store. He’s not going as far as having a security guard out front, but he hopes that the police department might do more patrols in the area.

“I’m going to have more surveillance, but that day there were four guys in here,” he said. ​“When someone comes [to rob you], you don’t want to take any risky moves. I don’t know if security would really help.

“Every business it’s a risk,” he added. ​“It does make you kind of think, it this the thing you want to do because there are idiots like these every where.”