Surveillance video shows an attack that had a 74-year-old Maryland diner manager fearing for his life earlier this month.
Three masked men pistol-whipped Joe Fredholm and robbed the Tastee Diner in Laurel. Police believe the robbers may have also caused a massive crash on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.
Fredholm was inside the Tastee Diner with a cook and two customers when the robbers dressed as ninjas rushed inside about midnight.
They forced Fredholm to the floor, held the cook at gunpoint and tried to kick down the office door.
The suspects eventually let Fredholm get up so he could open the cash register.
He said they threatened to kill him a couple times and hit him with his gun twice on the side of the head.
"He threatened to kill me a couple of times," Fredholm said. "He hit me with the bell of his gun twice on the side of the head."
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The robbers left with about $400 and a cellphone, an assistant manager at the restaurant said, fleeing in a burgundy BMW and were last seen heading toward Howard County.
After the robbery, police received calls about an erratic driver in a burgundy BMW in the southbound lanes of the BW Parkway about 12:30 a.m. According to U.S. Park Police, the erratic driver crashed into at least seven vehicles at a fast speed before getting out of his wrecked car and firing a single shot to scare another driver and steal that car.
A spokesperson for the City of Laurel said the getaway car from the robbery was among the vehicles at the crash scene on the BW Parkway.
Police recovered the stolen vehicle in Northeast Washington, but the driver got away. It's not clear whether the other robbers from the diner were involved in the incident on the BW Parkway.
No one was hit by the bullet, but several people suffered minor injuries in the crashes, U.S. Park Police said.
