Man uses stolen swords to rob Spruce Grove store: RCMP

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Parkland RCMP need help finding a suspect after a man armed with stolen swords robbed a Spruce Grove liquidation store last month.

A man cased businesses near McLeod Avenue and Calahoo Road on June 9 around 5 p.m., police said in a July 3 news release.

After the Parkland Tai Chi Association was broken into, three swords were stolen and subsequently used to rob Retail Revolt, located at 95 McLeod Ave. in Spruce Grove, police said.

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“He broke a piece of glass and cut himself, so there was blood everywhere upstairs,” Mike Curle, owner of Retail Revolt, told Postmedia on Saturday.

“I was working downstairs and I heard a pop — like I could hear commotion upstairs, but I thought people were working,” he said, noting you can “hear the swords clanging” on his security video.

Raising the sword

As Curle reshelved inventory, he came within three feet of the sword-wielding man.

“I said, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ And he mumbled something, and when I saw him reach for the sword, I said, ‘Take what you want.’ I backed up,” Curle said.

“You can see him raise the sword up and then turn to go to the register.”

Curle ran out the back of the store and thought of approaching a nearby car — an older green Chrysler Sebring with three people inside — for help. But after “fumbling” with the register, the suspect “actually walked to the car that I was going to yell at,” Curle said.

“I didn’t know it was the getaway vehicle at the time, but I almost yelled at them in the parking lot that I was being robbed, but I’m glad I didn’t,” he said.

“They pulled up nonchalantly. The female driver — she pulled up like not a care in the world, but they went right by me,” he said, noting the two other people in the vehicle were men.

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The main suspect didn’t take any merchandise but did steal Retail Revolt’s cash box with $150 inside.

“The video is quite hilarious. He was there trying to open it. He actually broke one of the swords …  so he broke it either trying to get out (of the store) or trying to get into the register. Then he decided, ‘I’m just going to take the entire thing,’” Curle said.

“It took him forever to take the register off, and you can see in one of the videos the door pounding from the inside with him trying to break it out.”

The store was closed during the robbery and the week prior.

“I know what went through my head was my daughter is 15. She’s coming up on important years, and I just thought, ‘I need to get out of here,’” he said.

“Had my daughter been there, it would have been different,” he said, adding he would have fought, “but since it was just me, I could just run.”

‘Money doesn’t matter’

Curle estimates damage to affected businesses runs “in the thousands,” with damage to his store being around $500.

“Honestly, the money doesn’t matter. The main thing is it was only me there, and that’s all I cared about,” he said.

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“Throughout the whole thing, I couldn’t care less about anything else. Having an employee do that for money — me? I’m fine doing it. I own the business. It just opened my eyes to looking at different ways to secure it because it’s not getting any better around here.”

Police described the suspect as a skinny six-foot-two man in his 30s with brown hair, wearing aviator sunglasses, dark pants and a dark hoodie.

If you have information about the robbery, contact RCMP at 825-220-7267 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

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