A UK rock band was just “10 minutes” into their US tour on Tuesday when they were robbed at gunpoint at a Starbucks in California and they expressed shock at the calm reaction of Americans at the scene.
The band Sports Team stopped their tour van at a Starbucks in Vallejo around 9 a.m. Tuesday to grab some coffee before driving to their first show in Sacramento. Frontman Alex Rice, guitarists Rob Knaggs and Henry Young, bassist Oli Dewdney, keyboardist Ben Mack, drummer Al Greenwood and their tour manager were all present inside when a group of masked people captured first “searched” the truck.
“Man ran in saying some guys were crashing into a truck. Ran out to try to stop it and found masked guys ransacking the truck,” the band wrote along with a video of the robbery.
The band members who ran outside tried to stop the robbers, but “they pulled out their guns,” the band wrote. “The police response was to ‘file an online report’.”
The band said they had personal items stolen, but luckily their instruments were not lost.
“They can take away our Nintendo Switch but they can never take away our ability to play rock songs about the highway,” the band wrote.
“In all seriousness, it’s pretty shocking that everyone seems resigned to it. ‘It happens’. 9 a.m. at some Starbucks gas station. Wild,” the band wrote of the American reaction at the scene.
In the video, after the robbers grabbed the guns, Greenwood can be heard shouting “Get down, Lauren, get down” as the band members ran back inside the Starbucks.
In the UK, most private gun ownership is illegal, with the exception of certain long guns used for hunting. In an interview with the BBC, the band members recalled the moment they ran to confront the robbers but were faced with the threat of gunfire.
Greenwood told the BBC: “Lauren, our tour manager, was a little ahead of me, and someone else ran past us in the opposite direction and said: ‘Careful, what is he holding? there'”.
“I actually thought I was about to see someone get shot, because it took a while for our tour manager to notice,” he said. “In the video, you can hear me screaming for her to lie down.”
Rice describes the very different reactions of British band members and locals at Starbucks.
“Obviously, if someone pulls out a gun, you run for cover,” Rice told the newspaper. “But what struck me was the resignation. The people around us didn’t panic at all. It seemed to happen every day.”
— With TMX reporting
Tags California, Starbucks