Five Young Gunmen Steal $4,500 In Daring Night Holdup Of West Side Kroger Store

Five Young Gunmen Steal $4,500 In Daring Night Holdup Of West Side Kroger Store

Bandit Gang Terrorizes 12 Employes

Five youthful gunmen, four of them masked, last night held up and robbed the Kroger Supermarket at Stadium Blvd. and Jackson Ave. and escaped with more than $4,500 after locking 10 store employes in a cheese cooler and shooting open one section of the safe with a deer rifle. Another safe compartment failed to yield to a pistol bullet.

The bandits escaped in the car of the store manager, Kenneth Taylor of Saline, but apparently changed quickly to a waiting getaway car. Taylor's car was found about 5 a.m. near Burwood and Abbott Ave., a few blocks from the store.

Roadblocks thrown up throughout the area failed to net any suspects. The gunmen had a comfortable head start before the store employes freed themselves and gave the alarm.

Excellently Planned

Detective Sgt. Claude Damron of the City Police Department said the holdup "certainly was not the smoothest ever pulled but excellently planned."

The five gunmen were waiting about 9:55 p.m., about an hour after the store's closing time, when a truck from Kroger's Detroit supply house rolled up with groceries for the supermarket.

One of the store's employes, Dennis Moffat, 19, of Dexter, let the trucker, John Vunck, 41, of Garden City, in the rear door, a man, unmasked and fairly well dressed, appeared out of the darkness and walked into the store. A few seconds later four more youths, masked and carrying guns, pushed Vunck and Moffat inside and closed the door.

The gunmen moved fast. While two of the bandits rounded up six workers in the stock rooms, the other three moved out into the business section of the market and herded five more, including Taylor, back to the rear.

Ordered Into Freezer

All 11-Taylor, Vunuck, Moffat, Toshio Kimura, Arther Frank, Floyd Morris, Chearles Wright, Hershel Spencer, Max Hepburn, Water Moore, and William Carr- were ordered into a walk-in freezer. The gunmen changed their plans when Wright protested, saying, "You can shoot me before I'll go in there. It's 20 below zero and we'll all freeze to death."

Instead the bandits took the group to a 6 by 8 foot cubicle used as a cheese cooler and forced them inside, barricading the door wit cases of soft drink bottles.

But unknown to the holdup men, a 12th employe, 18-year old George Gilligan of 1400 Edgewood Ave., was still loose to the store.

Gilligan, seeing a stranger in the store, had walked toward the rear, where he saw his fellow workers standing against the wall with their hands raised. The youth then ran into the stock room and crawled on top of a meat refrigerator.

Later, when the gunmen blew one compartment of the safe open with a 30-.06 deer rifle, the other employes thought Gilligan had been shot and asked their guards what they had "done to George."

Stays Hidden

When a search failed to locate the youth, one of the gang called over the store's loudspeaker system, "It's all right now George. You can come out." Gilligan stayed where he was.

The gunmen resorted to gunfire to open the safe compartments when the night manager, Taylor, told them it had a 15-minute delayed action on the safe combination. The outer and larger door to the safe was unlocked, but two inner compartments were not. One broke open to a rifle  slug fired into the combination, but the other resisted the impact of a pistol bullet. The second compartment was said to have held 'considerably more' money than the $4,500 stolen.

After scooping up the cash from the open safe compartment and cash register drawers, the group fled, leaving the employes barricaded in the cooler and Taylor locked in the trailer of an empty truck behind the store. The employes forced their way out some 45 minutes later and released Taylor when they heard him pounding inside the truck.

Appeals to Gilligan to "Come out George, it's all over," at first failed to dislodge the youth from his hiding place.

"I'd heard that story before," Gilligan said.

Not Professional Job

Detective Damron and John Walters said that, though the gunmen had apparently planned long and well (they knew Taylor was the manager and apparently were acquainted with the store's hours and procedures) the holdup was far from a professional job.

Accounts by the witnesses pictured the gunmen as extremely nervous, and only the most desperate and amateurish robber would use a pistol to attempt to blow open a safe, the detectives said.

There were few similarities between last night's robbery and the $1,800 holdup at the Food & Drug Mart at Stadium Blvd. and Packard Rd. on Jan. 30, detectives said. In that holdup, the gunmen, either two or three of them moved in while customers filled the store, and the job was executed with a coolness that suggested the men were "old hand," according to officers.

THEY COULD SMILE AFTERWARD: Although badly frightened, some of the employes of the Kroger Store at Stadium Blvd. and Jackson Ave. were able to muster smiles last night after five gumen held up the store and got away with $4,500. In left foreground are William Carr and John Vunuck. Behind them is Toshio Kimura. Lined up left to right are Arther Frank, Dennis Moffat, Floyd Morris, George Gilligan, Charles Wright, Herschel Spencer and Max Hepburn. All but Gilligan were imprisoned in a small cold storage room by the bandits, as was Walter Moore(not pictures). Gilligan hid atop a meat cooler. The store manager, Kenneth Taylor (not pictured), was locked up in an empty truck trailer outside the store.

ROOM USED AS 'PRISON': This is the tiny cold room used for storing cheese, in which 10 Kroger employes were "jammed like sardines" by the holdup gang. The cases of soft drink bottles at left were piled against the door by the gunmen, but the captives managed to force their way out.

POLICE EXAMINE SAFE: Patrolman Hans Jens, Detective Sgt. Claude Damron Detective John Walters and Patrolman Robert Cook (left to right) examine the Kroger store safe which was blown open with a rifle bullet and looted of about $4,500.