Four Wichita businesses robbed overnight (+video)

Police said four businesses were robbed Friday night and Saturday morning in different parts of the city.

All of the robberies involved a weapon.

The first robbery of a business occurred at about 8:05 p.m. Friday at the ABC Discount Liquor store at 301 S. Tyler Road, near Maple, said Sgt. Troy Nedbalek.

In that west-side robbery, a man wearing a Kansas City Chiefs hooded sweatshirt pointed a semi-automatic handgun at the clerk and demanded money from the register. The robber fled on foot, Nedbalek said.

Less than an hour later, around 9 p.m., a man armed with what Nedbalek said was a large kitchen knife entered the Family Dollar at 936 S. Woodlawn and demanded that an employee open the cash register.

The man “said he’d cut a separate employee if she didn’t do it,” Nedbalek said.

The man left the southeast Wichita store on foot with cash.

A third armed robbery occurred around 12:15 a.m. Saturday at Wasabi restaurant, 912 E. Douglas, near Washington in downtown Wichita.

In that incident, a male suspect entered the restaurant from a back door, pointed a silver revolver at an employee and demanded cash from the register. The robber took an unknown amount of cash from the register and a tip jar, Nedbalek said.

A fourth robbery happened about 2 1/2 hours later in northeast Wichita.

At around 2:35 a.m. Saturday, a man with his face covered entered the Casey’s General Store at 3520 N. Woodlawn — north of K-96 — with a handgun and walked behind the counter, demanding that the clerk open the cash register.

“He grabbed the cash from the drawer,” Nedbalek said. “The suspect then grabbed four cartons of (Newport) cigarettes” and fled the store on foot, heading east.

Nedbalek said he doesn’t know if the robberies are connected.

“I’m sure the robbery section’s going to be taking a look at that pretty close,” he said. “The Family Dollars and Casey’s Generals, they’re all kind of the same businesses. Robbers sometimes like to hit the same thing over and over because they’re kind of soft targets.”

But it was unusual to have that many armed robberies of businesses in less than a day.

“It was a pretty busy day,” Nedbalek said. “Normally we don’t have four or five robberies in a 24-hour period like this. Just a full moon or something. I don’t know.”

This story was originally published January 9, 2016 at 2:50 PM with the headline "Four Wichita businesses robbed overnight (+video)."