A Chicago-area restaurant owner is alive today, very possibly because he called on God to save him.
A crazed, gun-wielding robber held the owner of Arepa Express in Melrose Park, Illinois, at gunpoint in mid-May, reportedly stealing some $10,000 worth of jewelry from the restauranteur, an immigrant from Venezuela.
“I thought he was going to shoot me,” the business owner, who asked to remain anonymous, told WFLD-TV. “When someone pulls out a gun, it’s because they’re going to use it. I thought, ‘God help me.’”
Still shaken by the ordeal, the restaurant owner said the suspect pretended to be a patron who ordered food and left the establishment. He returned a number of times and asked to use the bathroom, at which point the interaction took a turn and the man pulled a gun on the shop owner.
“After the third time, he returns,” the restaurant owner said of the alleged attacker. “He takes out his gun and points it at me and threatened to kill me. I don’t wish that experience on anybody.”
Adding, “He told me to get on the floor, so I did. After a few seconds, a customer came over to help me get up and tell me that he was gone.”
One of the customers who witnessed the violent altercation called 911.
The Arepa Express owner said he has been in Chicago for eight years, telling the local news outlet, “It’s always a shame when it’s your own people doing these crimes.”
Andrew Mack, a spokesperson for the Melrose Park Police Department, told The Christian Post investigators are still looking into the case and have “dentified a person of interest who they strongly believe is the person [in the surveillance footage].”
Law enforcement officials are currently attempting to track down the suspect.
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