Holly MatkinCulver City, CA – A convicted felon on parole for robbery held up a cell phone store at gunpoint and briefly made off with $500 in cash over the weekend, according to police.
Lawrence Bell, 37, was wearing an ankle monitor as a condition of his parole when he stormed into the Boost Mobile store on Centinela Avenue at approximately 2:18 p.m. on July 10 and pointed a semiautomatic Glock handgun at the store’s employees, the Culver City Police Department (CCPD) said in a press release on Monday.
Security footage showed two workers talking with a customer as the masked felon barged into the showroom.
The workers both dropped down behind the counter at the sight of the gun pointed at them, and the customer quickly pushed past the armed attacker and fled the building.
Bell then jumped over the counter and forced the workers to open up the cash drawers, the video showed.
The armed suspect took handfuls of cash before walking out of the building.
Police responded to the scene and spoke with both workers, then reviewed security footage of the armed robbery.
That’s when they noticed that the suspect had dropped his car keys inside the store during the heist, the CCPD said in the press release.
Investigators conducted a check of the area and located the suspect’s vehicle parked approximately one block away from the scene.
They found clothing in the back seat that matched the description of the items the gunman had been wearing, according to police.
Officers then noticed a “suspicious subject matching the description of the suspect depicted in the surveillance video” loitering in the area and detained him without incident, the CCPD said.
He was later identified as Bell.
Police said they found the loaded Glock handgun inside Bell’s car during a search in addition to the cash taken in the robbery and “other items of evidentiary value.”
According to the CCPD, Bell was already on parole for another armed robbery and was wearing an ankle monitor at the time of the incident.
The case will be forwarded to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for potential charges, police said.
