A morning coffee break took at terrifying turn for customers at a Delray Beach Dunkin' Donuts shop Wednesday (2nd May 2012) morning when two robbers burst in waving guns.
On Thursday, Boynton Beach police released dramatic surveillance video of the 9:16 a.m. robbery at the shop, 2728 N. Federal Highway.
Footage shows two masked men with guns rush into the store. One jumps over the counter to get money from the drive-through cash register, while the other points his gun at employees behind the counter.
Most customers are seen hiding or dropping to the ground, but one man in line jumps on one of the robbers and tries to put him in a choke hold. The robber flips the 63-year-old man onto the floor and kicks him in the ribs.
The two robbers then point their guns at employees and force them to open cash registers. They dump about $2,000 in cash into a garbage bag and run out. Before leaving, one of the robbers kicks the 63-year-old man in the face as he lay on the floor.
The robbers drove off in a Nissan Altima, which a Boynton Beach police officer later spotted on Seacrest Boulevard.
The officer tried to pull over the getaway car, but the driver sped off and crashed into a grassy embankment off of Woolbright Road. The three men and one woman in the car were hospitalized and arrested. On Thursday morning, a Palm Beach County judge ordered them held on $150,000 bond each.
Abdias Jean-Baptiste, 18, and Actrice Alerte, 20, of Delray Beach, are accused of holding up the restaurant while their two accomplices waited outside in the car, police said.
Franke Pierre-Louis, 21, of Delray Beach, allegedly drove the getaway car. Ashley Silmone, 20, of Lake Worth, was a passenger.
An undercover police officer saw the car on Seacrest Boulevard and tried to pull it over. Pierre-Louis instead dodged traffic at 70 mph and eventually drove off the shoulder of Woolbright Road and crashed into a clump of trees on a grassy embankment, just west of Interstate 95.
The banged-up car, with dented roof and doors, came to a stop near the parking lot beside the garden center of the Lowe's home-improvement store.
All four inside the car ran but were later arrested. Police found two guns in the back seat of the Altima
Police arrested all four suspects. One was taken to Delray Medical Center with serious injuries, and the others were taken to Bethesda Memorial Hospital with injuries that are not life threatening, according to Boynton Beach Fire Rescue.
Jean-Baptiste and Alerte face armed robbery charges. Pierre-Louis and Silmone face charges of accessory to an armed robbery. Pierre-Louis also was arrested on a charge of aggravated fleeing and eluding police.
