PORTLAND, Ore. — A customer fought off an armed robber at a cannabis store on Friday. Now, the owner is calling on police for help.
Laszlo Bagi runs five cannabis shops in Portland and his store, Eden Cannabis, on Southeast 12th Avenue near Burnside was robbed just before 9 p.m. He says this incident is just the latest in a string of robberies stretching back to 2020.
Surveillance video from inside the shop shows a man wearing a mask armed with a gun enter Eden Cannabis. There were two employees and a customer inside the store when the suspect came in just before closing.
A customer is seen on video confronting the robber, asking him to leave. Employees slowly move toward a "safe room" as the two men fight with objects being thrown back and forth. The customer throws a tip jar at the suspect. Then the customer picks up a garbage can and throws a chair toward the gunman. During the altercation, the suspect hit the customer in the head with a pistol.
"That guy ... he was amazing," said Bagi, who's been in the cannabis industry for 12 years.
The suspect jumps over the counter and appears to take something from a glass display case before leaving.
Portland police said the suspect took off before officers arrived and he has not been arrested.
When asked if there was a connection to other robberies including those at Eden Cannabis, police said detectives are investigating.
"It's normal procedure to consider the possibility there are links between cases, particularly those with similar characteristics. We know there are chronic offenders out there," the Portland Police Bureau stated. "But detectives will have to do a lot of work to prove any connection to other crimes, so at this point any connection is speculative."
Thankfully, nobody was seriously injured.
"I don't want to arm my employees or anything, so I don't know what can be done except the city's got to get a grip on what's going on here and give us a hand,"
The store was closed a day later when KGW stopped by. This type of incident is nothing new for Bagi. The owner says in total, his stores have been hit 35 times in the past 3-4 years.
But he's not alone. Bagi says other cannabis stores have similar problems. He says a friend who also owns a handful of shops and has experienced numerous break ins.
"I don't know if there's anything we can do to stop it. They're pretty bold to come in here with customers in here with a gun in their hand," he said.