Auburn Police arrest two juvenile boys who robbed gas station

Clerk recovering from heart attack he suffered during the crime

Auburn detectives on Thursday located and arrested two suspects who allegedly robbed a Shell gas station on Sept. 8 as the clerk was having a heart attack.

A juvenile boy, 13, was taken into custody without incident in Tacoma around 2 p.m. and booked on three felony warrants that include unlawful possession of a firearm and burglary, Auburn Police said. The boy was booked into the King County Juvenile Detention Center.

Authorities later arrested a second juvenile suspect around 7 p.m. The boy, 17, was arrested for five outstanding felony warrants, one of which is for robbery. He was also booked into the detention center.

Police say the video of the incident and the public’s help were instrumental in the arrests. A man who was in the store at the time of the robbery identified the suspects, police said.

The gas station attendant collapsed on the evening of Sept. 8 with a heart attack while a man and the two teens were in the store at 201 Auburn Way S. At the time, they did nothing to help the attendant.

The suspects allegedly took advantage of the clerk’s situation to steal merchandise from the station and clean out the store’s cash register.

The clerk, Zarif Kelada, who was in critical condition after the robbery, is now out of the hospital and recovering.

Here is a police synopsis of what happened.

At 5:41 p.m. on Sept. 8, a man and two teenage boys entered the station, whereupon one of the teenagers grabbed what appeared to be a pepperoni stick from the counter and started to eat it. He then picked up a second stick and handed it to the other teen.

When the man approached the counter to buy an item, according to police, the clerk tried to charge the man for the pepperoni sticks, and the two began to argue. One of the teens then hands a dollar bill to the clerk. This upset the clerk, who approached the teens and started to talk with them.

Having spoken with the teens, the clerk, dollar bill still in hand, turned back to the register area but collapsed unconscious, according to police. While the man was leaving the store, one of the teenagers reached down and took the dollar bill from the hand of the unconscious clerk. As the stricken clerk lay unconscious on the ground, the boys exited and entered the store a couple of times, stealing merchandise and helping themselves to all the money in the cash register.

According to police, about three minutes later someone else entered the store, saw the clerk on the ground and called 911.