Cops: Alleged Robber Used “Gun” Many Will Recognize

An armed robbery this week at a South Carolina convenience store apparently wasn’t as “armed” as the clerk thought. CNN reports on the Tuesday incident at a Kwik Stop in the small town of Sharon, where a man donning a hoodie, wig, and mask entered the store around 5:45pm, per a release from the York County Sheriff’s Office. According to authorities, the suspect pointed to the gun in his waistband and ordered the clerk to hand over whatever cash was in the register—about $300.

Deputies tracked down Dalesandro in the parking lot of a nearby Dollar General and placed him under arrest. They say the pistol he’d used was tucked into his pants, except it wasn’t an actual pistol: It was a fake gun used to play the Nintendo video game Duck Hunt, spray-painted black, which could appear to mean that Dalesandro couldn’t be busted for an actual armed robbery.

Not quite. Law & Crime notes that in South Carolina, even “the mere representation of possessing a deadly weapon that a witness reasonably believed to be a real gun is enough” to hit someone with those charges. Per the sheriff’s office, Dalesandro—who was charged with armed robbery with a deadly weapon, petty larceny of less than $2,000, and “wearing masks and the like”—is being held without bond in the York County Detention Center.

Cops: Alleged Robber Used ‘Gun’ Many Will Recognize (newser.com)