Two enterprising teens in Illinois were mugged of their day’s earnings at a lemonade stand by men wielding a gun. When the local police found out, the cops took it upon themselves to replenish the stolen money out of their own pockets, reports the New York Post.
At the beginning of August the 13-year-old friends, Jude Peterson and Tristan Charbonnel, opened a lemonade stand in a quiet Peoria neighborhood. Police say that two other boys armed with a gun were caught by a neighbor’s surveillance camera robbing the boys’ stand.
On Sunday, Charbonnel was a guest on Fox & Friends Weekend where he told the hosts “last week two boys came up with a gun and took all the money.” According to the victims, the two slightly older boys who robbed them first drove by slowly, waving to the kids before approaching the lemonade stand.
“It was really surprising, but there wasn’t really time to be scared,” Charbonnel said.
“One of them pulled out a gun and the other said, ‘let me get your cash box,'” Nathan Peterson, Jude’s father, told reporters. “They were kind of laughing about it.”
“The boys, I don’t think they could process what was happening at the moment. They were kind of stunned, like, ‘what’s going on?'” he said.
The Peoria Journal-Star reports that the boys were left uninjured, but the thieves stole their cash box, which held around $30 from the day’s take.
Nathan Peterson then told local news the Peoria police officers came to lend the boys a helping hand and they “were buying $20 lemonades, which was really kind of them.”
Local police paid the boys a visit on Saturday to establish a presence and assure them they could reopen their business. “The boys are up for it,” Peterson’s father said, beaming. “I don’t know if they realize what could have happened if they responded differently.”
“They were super-gentle with the kids and really seemed to care,” he said of the officers. “They were a great calming presence in the situation.”
On Sunday, Chief Loren Marion of the Peoria Police Department told Fox & Friends Weekend that his department’s community policing sergeant “came up with the idea after the incident happened to do a fund-raiser for the kids.”
Marion told Fox that the entire department received an email saying, “‘Hey, we would like to try to replace the money with these kids and encourage them.’ And it took off from there.”
When neighbors heard about the incident they also made sure to stop by the lemonade stand to sample the product. They reportedly donated money and goods, such as candy and potato chips, for the boys to put on sale.
“He must have heard what happened and drove to the store,” Mr. Peterson said of one neighbor. “That was really beautiful.”
“There were so many people helping us out,” Charbonnel said in Sunday’s interview.
“A lot of really caring people kind of have risen up during this,” Nathan Peterson added before saying, “Unbelievable. He enjoyed having a little business and having some responsibility,” Peterson said of his son. “I think he naturally wants something like that. If it was adults who did this, I think I’d be in a different place,. I know kids do really stupid things, and they do stupid things in nice neighborhoods, too, not just in struggling neighborhoods. The response from the community makes me feel like it’s still a safe place, but obviously I’m back-and-forth about it.”
Chief Marion also said on Sunday that detectives working the lemonade stand robbery case are “making progress,” and are hopeful the department will soon make an arrest.