Staffers at a restaurant in the Potomac Yard area recently fought off a knife-wielding attempted robber and are telling their story.
On the night of Sept. 1, manager Merve McDonald was behind the counter at Omar’s Pitas & Platters (3100 Richmond Highway) and turned his back momentarily when the commotion started.
As staff were gearing up to close for the night, McDonald said a man holding a hunting knife walked in, jumped over the counter and demanded staff open the register or he would kill them. McDonald said he shouted for help from his staff and was forced to defend himself with a foot-long grill scraper when the suspect lunged at him.
“Nothing like that has ever happened to me,” McDonald said. “I didn’t have a choice. If he just stayed in front of the counter and flashed the knife, we probably would have given him the money in the register.”
Video surveillance showed the suspect walk in holding a large hunting knife, jump on the counter and wave the knife around, according to a recently released search warrant affidavit.
McDonald hit the suspect several times with a grill scraper, and said that he shouted for his coworker, Ahmad Yones Omar, to help.
“I know how to swing a cricket bat, and I hit him pretty hard,” McDonald said.
Omar said he’s never experienced anything like that before.
“I just started throwing cutting boards at him, whatever I could,” Omar said.
McDonald said that the suspect backed away from the employees, crawled back across the counter, left the restaurant and then returned.
“He said he would be back, and left and then walked back in a second later, and then left again,” McDonald said.
The Alexandria Police Department said the suspect was “heavily bleeding” and fled on foot. An APD K-9 officer followed a blood trail four blocks to a home in the 300 block of Hume Avenue, where they found the suspect, Stanley Tirone Rivers, injured and “hiding under his mother’s bed,” according to the affidavit.
Rivers was transported by medics to Inova Alexandria Hospital and was charged the next day with attempted robbery with a weapon, a Class 5 felony punishable by one to 10 years in prison. He’s scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on Oct. 9.
