It's scary how insecure Monterrey (and Mexico, in general) is becoming.
Yesterday, my fiancee and me were walking from our car to a local print shop, when we noticed that the clerk was signaling us to hurry. We thought he was about to close or something (which seemed odd, since it was about 2:oo pm), but when we got there, he locked the door behind us and said "there's a robbery next door!"
It was then that we noticed that the shop was full of other scared looking customers, and a girl in the corner that was crying inconsolably, yelling "he put the gun to my face!". Seems like the thugs had just left, because about a minute later, another young woman came to the shop with her hands tied. We helped her free her hands, then she said that there was someone else tied back in her shop, so I offered to go with her (everyone else seemed to frightened to do anything).
I told my fiancee to wait there and I grabbed a cutter and went next door, where indeed there was a man on the floor, with his feet and hands tied behind his back. I asked him if he was alright, and he said he was, so I cut his bindings and went back to my fiancee, but then realized that the police had not arrived yet. Thus, I went outside (everyone was still panicked inside the print shop) and started to look for a police officer (the street was very busy, so I would see one eventually).
Sure enough, a few minutes later a police car casually passed by, but when he noticed that I was signaling him to stop, he u-turned and rolled his window down, so I yelled "there has just been a robbery here!" Now I had his attention. He turned on his turrets and started to ask for backup and in a few minutes there were no less than 5 police cars and officers all over the place, asking everyone the same questions and talking on their radios like they meant business.
After listening to everyone's stories, seems like the man I freed was the clerk in the shop and two thugs came in on a truck with guns, tied him up and started loading merchandise. Coincidentally, the shop owner (the young woman that would come to the print shop later) arrived at her business and started demanding answers as to why they were taking the merchandise, to which the robbers declared "the man inside told us". When she went inside, she found herself staring down the barrel of a gun, was tied and thrown in the back with her clerk tied there. The other girl (the one that was crying inside the print shop when we got there), went inside by mistake, looking for her sister (who was in the print shop next door), but the robbers tied her too in case she noticed the robbery and stole her purse while she was there.
In the end they left with the purses of both women, merchandise from the shop and the SUV the owner of the shop came in. The odd thing is that it was a marble stone store, so they loaded their truck with huge, heavy marble tables and figures. Seems to me that it would've been way easier to steal a BMW in a stop light. But that's just me.
I really hope things get better in my home country, because stories like this (and even worse ones) are only getting more and more common to hear.
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