Montgomery County police are seeking the public's help in identifying and locating a suspect in the July 30, 2024 armed robbery of the Shell gas station at 10211 Westlake Drive in Bethesda. Sometime after 11:00 PM that night, the suspect entered the gas station's convenience store and went into the restroom. Around 11:33 PM, he approached the cashier at the store's checkout counter, and displayed a knife. He proceeded to grab unspecified merchandise from behind the counter, and stuffed it into his backpack before fleeing the scene.
Police describe the suspect as a Black male, approximately 26-years-old, 5'6" in height, with a medium build and goatee. He was wearing a black/camouflage cap, black t-shirt, black pants, and black tennis shoes, and carrying a black/camouflage backpack.
Anyone with information regarding this suspect is asked to visit the Crime Solvers of Montgomery County, MD website at www.crimesolversmcmd.org and click on the “www.p3tips.com” link at the top of the page or call 1-866-411-8477.Tips with information leading to an arrest may be eligible for a reward from $250 up to $10,000. Tipsters may remain anonymous.
13 comments:
Yeah, there's no crime issue here. Sure. The message from law enforcement brass, county council and others is that you aren't seeing what you're seeing it's simply your imagination. And some on here will harshly criticize these comments. Unreal. People should be screaming outside of the county council offices but no, they'll vote every Dem running this Fall.
Apparently the only socially acceptable comment I can make is that society made him do it. Seems paradoxical.
As I recall, that isn’t the first time that station has been hit. I am pretty sure there have been multiple armed robberies there since the 1990s. That isn’t dismissing the crime, just saying the location is familiar on the police blotter, sadly.
Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield has just sold Annapolis Mall. Montgomery and Wheaton next?
Hmmm. . . I don't recall anyone other than you saying there isn't crime in Bethesda, JAC. What people --well, *this person* have said repeatedly is there has *always* been crime in 2D, the Bethesda police district, certainly going back as far as the early 1980s, when I spent every night from Monday to Sunday listening to the calls on scanners, and photographing such events as I could drive to on weekends, taking photos of police and fire action for the newspapers. The difference between then and now is communication: 40 years ago you needed to either have a scanner or else buy a newspaper --WaPo, the Montgomery Journal or the Gazette-- to know what happened in your community, and with the papers you were offered only the highlights editors judged newsworthy. If you didn't have a scanner and didn't turn to the printed blotter reports, you lived in blissful ignorance of what criminal events were around you. Today, the internet allows Robert to beam the latest police activity directly to you, so you can be alerted of car thefts while you sit in your living room, of armed robberies while you wait in line at the Giant, of assaults as you lounge on the beach in Bora Bora.
You, (collective, not singling out you-singular, JAC,) are pushed information on crime, as you are pushed information on store openings/closings, WSSC street closures, real estate transactions, new menu items at McDonald's, and all the rest -- a thousand news items Robert diligently reports every day making you infinitely more informed about details that shape the community. It isn't that McDonald's didn't have limited-time menu items 20 years ago, or that stores didn't open and close in the area, or that the Westlake Shell wasn't getting robbed back then --they did, they were. We are all more aware of the events *now,* in 2024 Bethesda, because Robert, (and the internet as a whole,) provide effortlessly accessible centralized reporting for this information. All we need do is bookmark Robert's page to be kept up to date on all manner of things in the community, unlike a generation ago, when you had to put on pants and go hunt down this week's copy of the Journal or the Gazette to be informed. It is a thousandfold easier for us as readers and news consumers to learn volumes more about what's going on in our community in 2024, thanks to the internet and to sites like Robert's. The news he reports [usually] isn't novel or unprecedented, but to the reader who previously didn't know there was precedent for such things it might seem otherwise.
There is no habitable place on Earth that is altogether free of crime, and certainly Bethesda has its share. But comparatively speaking, this area is peaceful and stable and, in the main, unburdened with the sort of bad things that plague other areas of the county, state, and country. You want crime? Spend an afternoon or evening strolling around Silver Spring, West Baltimore, or St. Louis.
By all means, I want our police to catch each and every robber, thief, vandal, rapist, and their criminal cousins, and have these deviants and malefactors welcomed to the county's cellblocks for an extended stay of misery and trauma that far eclipses the loss, hurt, and suffering they visited on their victims. But for us, the law-abiders, cut yourself a break and stop thinking Bethesda is Beirut with more restaurants. It isn’t. It is one of the safest communities in America.
For one, thanks for the thoughtful posting, but I believe you err in one important aspect. You seem to infer that 'today' we get the local crime news somehow accurately, and totally. That is simply incorrect and misleading, all we get are pieces of news, here and there in differs forums and from various sources. It's more than just convenient fir our elected 'officials' that our crime news is not aggregated in total and dispersed. Most of us here likely read other forums and know the crime is much worse than gets reported thru these local blogs. Regardless, if we continue to passively confront our crime, it's not going to get any better. Often posts such as yours only serve to make our efforts weaker. Do you consider DT SS crime acceptable?
Rationalization of events by saying reporting is more widespread but ignoring factors that have brought us here is exactly what we expect from someone either running for reelection or one of their supporter drones. Either way, the policies supported by the left has gotten us to where we are and constantly making excuses means nothing to the increasing number of victims.
@8:17 Very well said.
n/a - Excellent post! I understand what you're saying and agree for the most part. And with all this new media, shouldn't our officials communicate better and more often? I think they should. No one said there hasn't been any crime in this area. I'm old enough to remember the horrific story of the Lyons sisters who were snatched by monsters while at Wheaton Plaza with their parents. But in the Bethesda district and surrounding, we could actually have significant crime reduction. Rockville is soft on crime. Can you say that in the past, thugs walked right of jail only to commit more crimes? I think there was stricter penalties back then. We need police. We need a tough on crime stance. And the police robot light pole things are a blight. They don't make people feel safer, they scream to them that they are in a high crime area. And thank goodness for blogs like this one and other media which, as you stated, we didn't have before. More information is better than less or none. Great post.
It it wasn't for this blog, I would never have heard about the car jacking spree in Bethesda. My colleagues has not heard of it either. Learning
🥇🥇🥇🥇 You just scored an Olympic 10! Thank You.
Soon coming to a neighborhood near you.
Compliments of our fearless leaders.
9:40, to the point of an earlier post: there is no one good source of all the *reported* crime around us. Just like perp descriptions leaving out pertinent details, we can safely assume it's worse than a few blogs happen to say and consistently perps of the same ilk.
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