Police arrest woman they say robbed gas station with shotgun

GARDEN CITY, Mich. - Frightening moments at a Garden City gas station when the clerk is robbed at gunpoint.

Now police have identified and arrested the woman seen in the surveillance video.

She is very familiar to the gas station workers, but they never imagined she would be capable of this.

"I was just in shock," said Ali Hammoud. "I know her that she would do something like this kind of odd."

Hammoud recognized the regular customer who came into the Shell gas station on Middlebelt in Garden City early Wednesday morning..

On video you see him come out from behind the counter and the protective glass window.

The suspect comes in  three to five times a week and lives in the area. The woman claimed she needed help reaching something off the top shelf but the clerk quickly realized she was there to help herself.

"I didn't see the shotgun," Hammoud said. "As soon as I got in front of her to reach up for it, she put it on my back. I felt it."

She pulled out the shotgun with a pistol grip and pointed at his back.

"She's like, 'If you make one stupid move you are going to regret it,'" Hammoud said.

Hammoud says the brazen bandit forced him back behind the counter to unload the registers. The thief grabbed the $900, a stack of scratch off lottery tickets and shoved Hammoud into the back room.

On the way out, the hooded suspect swiped another handful of scratch offs and took off.

But she failed to realize in the back room there was a back door. About 20 seconds later, Hammoud says he took off running. he was able to flag down a motorist down on Middlebelt, who called police.

Hammoud says he regrets not doing more to stop the suspect but in the end he felt it was better to be safe than sorry.