Deputies say a 9-year-old boy running a lemonade stand in Monroe was robbed at gunpoint on Saturday. The boy told the Union County Sheriff's Office a male teenager with a camouflage hat and black shirt placed a black handgun to his stomach, demanded money, and then fled on foot. He was robbed of $17.
“Never thought in a million years, you know, I’d be racing off to pick him up with somebody pointing a gun at him and taking his money from just a simple thing as selling lemonade,” Phillip Smith, the boy's father, told WCNC.
Deputies say they found a camouflage hat, a BB handgun, and the metal container the boy used to collect money in some nearby woods. The sheriff’s office says the suspect may have hidden a bike in the woods that he used to flee after the robbery.
Neighbors told WSOC TV that the boy relocated his stand to the community pool just a day after the robbery. The community collected $256 for the boy that will go toward the purchase of a lawnmower.