North Carolina police are searching for a knife-wielding woman who climbed through a Taco Bell’s drive-thru window and stole a cash drawer from the register.
The Winston-Salem Police Department responded to a report of an armed robbery at the restaurant at 345 Akron Drive at 4:24 p.m. Saturday, according to a department press release.
Investigators said the suspect “wielded a knife” as she entered the restaurant’s drive-through window, where she was able to retrieve a drawer from the register during the incident.
Police described the suspect as a woman in her 40s wearing a green shirt and holding a “large knife”.
Police are searching for the woman who ran a knife through the driveway of a Taco Bell in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A general view of Taco Bell’s corporate headquarters is shown on October 26, 2020 in Irvine, California. AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/Getty
The woman escaped with an undisclosed amount of money after fleeing in a brown SUV that was waiting in the area.
Taco Bell employees were unharmed in the incident, police said.
“No further information regarding the release is available at this time,” the press release reads.
The investigations are ongoing.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Winston-Salem Police Department at 336-773-7700 or utilize the department’s Text-A-Tip program at (336) 276-1717.
Tips can be submitted anonymously to Crime Stoppers at (336) 727-2800 or online.
The Taco Bell robbery is one of several crimes at restaurants in recent weeks in Winston-Salem, a municipality in North Carolina’s Piedmont Triad region, as well as across the United States
According to WFMY News 2, on March 26, a firefighter was shot dead and another man injured in front of Kermit’s Hot Dog House at 2200 Thomasville Road.
Ross Michael Flynt and other firefighters were on duty eating outside, and the second victim, Patrick Dawarde Carter, had just left with his meal when someone in a blue car shot customers before fleeing the scene.
Both victims survived, and police arrested Elijah Tyshawn Stanton, 18, of High Point and Kristan Jevon Allen, 21, of Winston-Salem, and Keon Rush, 18, who was identified as the driver of the blue car.
Stanton and Allen were charged with causing serious injury with intent to kill with a deadly weapon and firing a firearm at an occupied property.
Other violent drive-thrus incidents have occurred at fast-food restaurants in recent months.
On March 31, the Dallas Police Department was investigating the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old boy in a Raising Cane driveway, where Zuri Andrew Goff was shot multiple times while in a car.
That report was followed by several others, including one in January at a Missouri McDonald’s where an employee was shot and injured in a discount dispute.
And in January in Los Angeles, a Taco Bell customer shot and killed an employee who refused to pay with counterfeit money.