Two Boston children hoping to make extra cash for the summer were robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight while they were running their lemonade stand.
The young entrepreneurs — an 11-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy — noticed two juvenile suspects passing the stand in South Boston around 4:45 p.m. on Wednesday before the suspects finally stopped to ask if the children accepted Apple Pay, according to the Boston Police Department.
Before the pair could respond, one suspect snatched the cash box while the other lifted his shirt and “displayed a black firearm” tucked into his waistband.
The two suspects then fled on foot with the cash box containing $50. The young victims then contacted their father, who called 911.
No arrests have been made, but police have released images and a short video of the juvenile suspects pacing around the area.
While police are investigating the incident, the children’s mother, Jennifer Byrne, told NBC Boston the ordeal has left her and her kids traumatized.
Byrne said she was alerted to the armed robbery while at work when her daughter called, hysterically crying.
“‘Somebody put a gun to us and took all of our money,’” she recalled her daughter telling her over the phone.
“My daughter said when they said ‘We’re taking it all,’ she put her arms up in the air and said, ‘Just take it. Just take it.’”
Byrne told the outlet that a neighbor noticed the suspect with the kids’ pink cash box soon after they were robbed and yelled at the pair to stop.
However, the young thieves dropped the box, quickly snatched the $50 inside, and fled the area again.
Byrne told WCVB that her son described one suspect as a Black male smaller than him — guessing he was around 10 or 11 — wearing a balaclava-style mask. The other was described as a Black male in his early teens, wearing a black Nike balaclava-style face mask, black shirt, shorts and high white socks.
“There’s two innocent little kids just trying to make some slush money, and they have to fear for their life. It’s horrific. It’s horrific. I have no other words,” Byrne told WCVB.
Boston City Councilor Ed Flynn wrote on Facebook Wednesday night that the armed robbery highlighted the community’s need for “more police officers and to redouble our community policing efforts.”
“The thoughts of our entire community are with the young children and the families who had to endure this terrible and senseless ordeal,” Flynn wrote.
“There is simply no one that envisions a place where a children’s lemonade stand is robbed at gunpoint as the safest city in America.”
As for the victims, neighbors have rallied behind them and are expected to turn out in droves Friday evening to support a new lemonade stand — a show of solidarity to help them recoup their losses, WCVB reported.
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