Washington State Fair: Three Armed Robberies On Same Night In Gun-Free Zone

Three armed robberies went down in the same night within minutes of each other at the Washington State Fair, a venue that is designated as a gun-free zone.

The fair, via information posted on its website under the topic “public safety inspections,” prohibits weapons of any kind, including firearms, on the grounds.

Leif Strom told local news media that he was walking home from the fairgrounds Sunday night after a 10-hour shift when a gun-toting suspect got out of a car and robbed him of $100 that he had earned that day. The suspect drove away in the vehicle that had three other men inside. At more than six feet tall, Strom towered over the suspect, but “I guess you feel pretty big when you have a gun,” he noted about the confrontation.

“Just 8 minutes later and a mile away on the complete other side of the fairgrounds, two more pairs of State Fair workers were robbed at gunpoint. Police believe they were targeted by the same group of robbers,” Komo News further reported.

The suspects are still at large.

Puyallup, Washington, police are beefing up patrols in and around the gun-free fairgrounds area as a result of these holdups. A local police official claimed, however, that “We have no reason to suspect that they were targeted just for being at the fair. Rather, I would surmise that this was just a crime of opportunity,” the News Tribune explained.

The same official described the gun-related lawbreaking as “bold, “brazen,” and an unusual occurrence for the fair.

The shooting sports and gun rights website Ammoland offered a fundamentally different response to news of the Washington State Fair robberies, given that the state fair is apparently only one of a handful of areas in Washington where legal guns are subject to a ban. “The effect of creating a weapons free zone was not lost on a group of criminals. They used the fact that fair workers were known to be disarmed to their advantage.”

Added pro-Second Amendment Downtrend.com about the fair workers being robbed at gunpoint on their way home, “Let’s see: a publicized event where firearms are banned mixed with workers being paid in cash…I seriously doubt these were random crimes…The fair banned firearms from the event and only good people followed that rule. The bad guys ignore the ruled and used it to their advantage to victimize innocent people.”

[Washington State Fair photo via Facebook]