<\/p>\n
A Chicago-area restaurant owner is alive today, very possibly because he called on God to save him.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought he was going to shoot me,\u201d the business owner, who asked to remain anonymous,\u00a0told WFLD-TV. \u201cWhen someone pulls out a gun, it\u2019s because they\u2019re going to use it. I thought, \u2018God help me.’\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the third time, he returns,\u201d the restaurant owner said of the alleged attacker. \u201cHe takes out his gun and points it at me and threatened to kill me. I don\u2019t wish that experience on anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adding, \u201cHe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the customers who witnessed the violent altercation called 911.<\/p>\n
The Arepa Express owner said he has been in Chicago for eight years, telling the local news outlet, \u201cIt\u2019s always a shame when it\u2019s your own people doing these crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andrew Mack, a spokesperson for the Melrose Park Police Department, told The Christian Post investigators are still looking into the case and have \u201cdentified a person of interest who they strongly believe is the person [in the surveillance footage].\u201d<\/p>\n
Law enforcement officials are currently attempting to track down the suspect.<\/p>\n
Please sign up for\u00a0Faithwire\u2019s daily newsletter\u00a0and download the\u00a0CBN News app\u00a0to stay up-to-date with the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. \u201cI thought he was going to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[3994,110,2112,182,3044,2522,8844],"class_list":["post-28922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-business","tag-calls","tag-chicago","tag-god","tag-gunpoint","tag-held","tag-owner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}