They allegedly stormed into the gasoline station outside Memphis, Tennessee, wielding pythons and – at fang point – stole $400 worth of CBD oil.
Now police are looking for suspects who were equipped in a manner rarely seen to pull off the robbery while those working at the store grapple with the stick-up’s fallout.
Two brothers working at the store when the robbery occurred early in March more recently said they felt threatened by the four robbers they encountered who had two snakes among them.
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“They were just waving them around and putting them on the counter,” employee Mayur Raval told local news station WREG. “One person brought in one snake first, and then after that, he brought in another snake.”
Surveillance footage released by the local police department shows one man holding a curled up snake in his hands over the counter – while another snake appears to be twisting in another man’s hand.
“I think they planned to successfully come here and rob the store,” Raval said. “The snake is a weapon, you know.”
It is unclear if police agreed with Raval that the group was planning to use the snakes as weapons.
Nonetheless, in certain instances, authorities can treat a stick-up as a case of armed robbery as long as victims believe their attackers are toting weapons. That concept is often seen in cases in which robbers indicate that they have guns, such as by putting their empty hands in their pockets while saying they are armed and demanding valuables.
In one surveillance video, a man appears to run to the back as the group comes in with the snakes. The other cashier is later seen talking to the group, taking pictures of the snakes and briefly holding one for a photo.
After some time, a man with the group appears to grab a handful of CBD oil before running out to his car.
The snakes appeared to be pythons, which are not venomous and are legal to own in Tennessee as nonpoisonous reptiles. One was white, and the other appeared to be “brown or a mix,” Raval told WREG.
This is not the first time that people robbing a gas station used a snake during a heist.
In April, a man tried to rob a gas station with a 5ft-long snake wrapped around his neck. The cashier refused to open the register, and the man was eventually arrested on two counts of attempted aggravated robbery.
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