Shotgun, Brick Used in Attempted Robbery at Tosa KFC

A woman who manages a was slightly injured and badly frightened Tuesday when she escaped from two would-be robbers, one armed with a shotgun and the other a brick, which he smashed through her car window as she drove off.

At 9:12 a.m., the manager, a 32-year-old Milwaukee woman, had pulled up to the drive-through window of her store at 6706 W. North Ave., intending to receive a bank deposit bag through the window from another employee inside the locked restaurant.

She honked her horn to let the other employee know she was ready.

She told police she then saw two young males approaching her from the alley north of the restaurant, one of them openly carrying a short-barreled shotgun. She said they made eye contact with her, and the one with the gun began shaking his head at her and mouthing the words "Don't move." He pointed the shotgun at her.

She said he advanced on her but stopped in an alcove next to the drive-through window, while the other suspect waited at the northwest corner of the building. A moment later, in response to her horn signal, an employee inside the store opened the window to hand her the bag.

The gun-wielding robber stepped out and grabbed for the bag, she said, while she, frightened out of her wits and only thinking of escape, stepped on the gas.

As she drove past the second suspect, he heaved a brick through the driver's window of her car, hitting her with it in the shoulder and showering her with shattered glass.

She told police she never stopped and drove into the alley heading west. In her rear-view mirror, she saw the two robbers running east down the alleyway.

The woman kept going until she reached North 73rd Street and West Meineke Avenue, where she stopped and called police to report her location. She waited for officers there.

A near miss with a dangerous missile

The employee inside the store told officers that as he was handing the deposit bag out the window he saw the manager suddenly drive off, then saw the robber next to the window and saw that he had a shotgun. He then heard a loud boom and saw the armed suspect running away. The deposit bag never left his hand.

Police told Wauwatosa Patch that there had been a report of a possible shot fired during the robbery attempt, but officers found no evidence of that and determined that the sound the man had heard was the brick hitting his colleague's window.

The woman reported that the brick had hit her with considerable force, badly bruising her shoulder, and that she believed if it had hit her in the head it might have knocked her out. She did not require medical treatment.

The woman described her assailants as two young black males. The one with the gun, she said, appeared about 17 or 18 years old, 5-feet 5-inches tall, weighing 150 pounds with a medium build. The other suspect she described as being in the same age range, 5-feet 7-inches tall, about 140 pounds with a thin build.

She said both were wearing gray hooded sweatshirts with the hoods up, and black jeans. Each also had a white mask, which she believed to be T-shirts pulled up over the lower part of their faces.

Police recovered one white T-shirt in the alley east of the restaurant that they believed might have been discarded by one of the robbers, because the shirt was dry while the ground beneath it was wet. They were able to recover evidence from the shirt that might provide a DNA sample.

Another employee of the same KFC had reported being as he was leaving work the night of Sept. 13. In that incident, the victim told police the robbers had ordered him to the ground and one held a gun to his head while he was robbed.