Two convenience store employees in Canada fought off a would-be armed robber with bananas, Global News is reporting.
On Saturday night at about 8:40 p.m., the employees, whose names have not been released, were working their shift at the unnamed Mississauga convenience store when a robber entered the building, approached the counter, and demanded cash. It remains unclear, as of this writing, if the male suspect brandished a weapon.
The employees, however, found impromptu weapons to use. Grabbing bananas from a display case, says Constable Akhil Mooken, the two employees struck the would-be robber with the fruit until he fled the store empty-handed.
In a tweet , the Peel Regional Police — no, we’re not making that up — matter-of-factly described the crime and indicated that the suspect is still on the loose.
#PRP investigating an attempted convenience store robbery in the area of Hurontario St/John St in #Mississauga . Male suspect fled after employees defended themselves by striking the suspect with a banana. No injuries. PR19-0043246.
— Peel Regional Police (@PeelPolice) February 3, 2019
Snarky Twitter users are, of course, having a field day discussing this crime in the comments.
At least they didn’t throw a bag of cashews at them – that would have been nuts.
“No injuries.” Didn’t the banana sustain a few bruises?
The suspect peeled out of there quickly. Thank you very much.
Don’t Resist Armed Robbers
Joking aside, Mooken repeated the conventional wisdom in the retail and banking industry that the police, and your employers, will always give you: don’t resist an armed robber. Just give them the money; 99 times out of 100, the robber wants the money, not your life. Give it to them.
“We always urge retail employees to not resist during robberies so as to avoid any injury.”
In fact, as the Patch reported in 2017, to fight back against an armed robber, even if you are armed yourself with something more substantive than a banana, is to participate in a game that you are going to lose. In all armed robberies, according to a 1984 study, only seven percent resisted their attacker. However, in those cases where the victim resisted, they accounted for 51 percent of all deaths in armed robberies.
That Doesn’t Mean That Canadians Don’t Think On Their Feet
Sage advice aside, this is not the first time that Canadians have used unconventional weapons to defend themselves against robberies.
As reported at the time by the Inquisitr , back in November 2018 two Canadian jewelry store workers fought off a would-be robber with swords. Security camera footage shows the four would-be robbers breaking through the store’s outer window with a hammer, then being met inside by three sword-wielding employees. One of the robbers tried to fire his handgun, but fortunately it jammed.
The robbers ran off empty-handed, and no one was injured.
