Metro Petro Truck Stop Targeted By Armed Robber

Oklahoma City police are asking the public’s help identifying an armed robber who targeted the Petro truck stop Friday morning on Martin Luther King Avenue.

This is not the first armed robbery at the store, but the managers learned from those experiences and now try to limit their losses.

Two clerks were working early Friday when a man walked into the truck stop island about 1 a.m. Surveillance video shows him wearing a black shirt, dark jeans and a blue mask on top of his head.

“He entered through the back entrance of the store, walked in the bathroom, walked around the store for a short period of time before going to the counter,” Oklahoma City police Master Sgt. Gary Knight said.

The video shows a look at the man's face before he pulls down the mask and pulls out what looks like a gun covered in duct tape.

“The clerk began to panic and scream,” Knight said. “A second clerk came up and complied with the gunman’s demands.”

Although the Petro is a busy truck stop next to multiple interstates, a clerk told News 9 there are lulls in their traffic, giving thieves an opportunity to attack.

Police will not say how much money the thief took, but their reports show the store no longer keeps cash larger than $10 bills at the register. That is because the store has been hit before, at least once by someone carrying a gun covered in duct tape.

Clerks told police this suspect got away in the driver's seat of a tan, two-colored Chevrolet pickup possibly built in the 1980s.

“It’s a frightening situation when somebody walks up and points a gun at you, but thankfully nobody was hurt,” Knight said.

If you have any information about the robbery, call Crime Stoppers at (405) 235-7300.