When man came running out of CVS with "a basket overflowing with L'Oreal and Nexxus bottles" yesterday morning and then threatened a cabdriver with a gun, it wasn't the police who stopped his reign of terror—it was a pair of Richmond University Medical Center EMTs.
The incident unfolded in Rosebank, at the CVS on Bay Street. The Staten Island Advance reports that Amy Hoglund and Denise Aruta saw the criminal dash out of the store and into a waiting cab. Hoglund said, "The manager was grabbing onto the cab. Then we saw the robber pull out a gun and point it to the driver's head. The cab took off then." So the EMTs followed the cab, with their lights and sirens on, and contacted the police.
Hoglund managed to trap the cab, explaining, "The cab was going through the back streets near St. Mary's Avenue. I knew the only way out was to come out through St. Mary's, so I drove around another side street on a one way going in the wrong direction so the cab would be trapped." The driver considered stealing the cab, but then decided against it, and just ran out, and" while lugging both the basket of shampoo and the gun, he accidentally dropped his weapon. He stopped to pick it up, then dropped the basket."
The EMTs stopped the chase when they saw him with the gun, but they were able to recover the shampoo.
