At least 10 phones were taken at gunpoint Wednesday in a robbery at a San Francisco mall cellphone store, police said.
Officers from the San Francisco Police Department’s Richmond Station say they responded just after 5:30 p.m. to reports of the robbery on Geary Boulevard at Masonic Avenue in the city’s Lone Mountain neighborhood.
When officers arrived at the City Center Shopping Mall’s AT&T Store, employees told them that a 19-year-old victim had been working when another man walked in, pointed a handgun at him and demanded cellphones.
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After the victim handed over between 10 to 15 items—including cellphones, a watch and a tablet—the gunman left on foot, police said.
Officers searched the area but did not find him. A district manager at the store Thursday confirmed the robbery had taken place, and that no one had been injured.
Police did not say whether a second cellphone robbery along Geary Boulevard was related. In that incident, which happened just after 8 p.m. about a mile-and-a-half west at 16th Avenue, a victim told police that a man approached him on a sidewalk and brandished a knife before taking his cellphone and keys.
There were 48 robberies reported in the city’s Lone Mountain neighborhood in the 12 months before Sept. 30, compared with 28 during the same period ending in September last year, according to police incident data analyzed by The Standard.
There were 38 reported robberies in the neighborhood during that same period ending in 2019.
Citywide, the number of reported robberies has dropped since pre-pandemic 2019, from 34 to 31 incidents per 10,000 residents.