Police investigating robbery and shooting at a beauty shop in Northwest Fresno

Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Police investigating robbery and shooting at a beauty shop in Northwest Fresno
The robbery happened in the back of the store by a sliding glass door.

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Fresno Police are investigating a robbery at a beauty salon in Northwest Fresno. It happened at 3:30 p.m. at La Vogue Beauty Salon as a customer was getting her nails done. Witnesses say a man appeared on the other side of a sliding glass door with a gun.

"Pretty shook up, she and her client were there," said Property Owner Chuck Hall. "It's a scary deal, someone takes a gun shoots through your slider."

Hall says his tenants are in shock. They told police the robber tried opening a locked door. When that didn't work, he broke the glass with his gun, fired at least one round at the ceiling, and then grabbed a customer's purse.

"We aren't doing a lot of cash business here, you can't come in here and rip and run," said Hall.

The shattered glass sliced open a 68-year-old woman's ankle. The thief made off with her purse which only included a few credit cards and $30 in cash. Police say it was a lot of risk for very little reward.

"Extremely unusual, robberies usually don't happen in this time of day and in this stretch here, we don't get robberies like this," said Lt. Joe Gomez with Fresno Police.

Just 400 feet away at a massage parlor, another armed robbery happened last week.

An employee there says two suspects forced their way in and stole hundreds of dollars in cash.

"You just can't defend yourself against stuff like that, you got wackos running out doing stuff like that but it is strange," said Hall.

Detectives are working to see if these two robberies were related. It's also possible that one of the customers or workers at this salon may have been targeted.

Fresno Police are investigating a robbery at a beauty salon in Northwest Fresno.