Two robbers, one brandishing a gun, knocked off a lemonade stand in Boston on Wednesday, violating the “innocence” of this timeless slice of Americana, authorities said.
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Officers responded to 157 W. 9th Street in South Boston a little after 4:44 p.m. after the two youngsters said they’d been robbed, Boston police said in a statement.
The robbers had “made several passes by the stand before approaching and asking whether Apple Pay would be accepted as payment,” police said.
But before “the victims could respond, the suspects grabbed” a cash box, and “both individuals fled the area,” police added.
Jennifer Byrne, the children’s mother, said her kids were traumatized by the experience, which cost them $50.
“My daughter called me. I’m at work. She was in hysterics, crying, saying, ‘Somebody put a gun to us and took all of our money,’” Byrne told NBC Boston. “They noticed two kids with masks over their face across the street. They kept coming back and forth.”
No one had been arrested Thursday afternoon.
City Council member Ed Flynn, who represents South Boston, decried the robbery.
“There is little I can think of more disturbing than the innocence of a children’s lemonade stand being violated by an armed robbery,” Flynn said in a statement.
He said the city can’t ignore Wednesday’s robbery or simply think of it as a minor crime.
“The thoughts of our entire community are with the young children and the families who had to endure this terrible and senseless ordeal,” Flynn said. “When something as serious as this happens, we cannot downplay or ignore it.”
Mayor Michelle Wu has called Boston the country’s safest major city, though Flynn said the lemonade stand robbery makes that claim hard to take seriously.
“We desperately need more police officers and to redouble our community policing efforts,” he said. “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.”
