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By LAUREN ROTH lroth@leader.net
Wednesday, March 05, 2003 Page: 3A
WILKES-BARRE – The wild-eyed man gave Regal Pizza owner Mike Simrelli a
look he can’t shake. Then he held his employee at knifepoint and robbed the 55
N. Main St. business Tuesday night.
Wilkes-Barre police said the man might have also robbed Lispi’s Cocktail
Lounge on Fox Hill Road in Plains Township a few hours earlier, though it was
too early in the investigation to be sure. Simrelli described the man he saw
as about 6-foot-2-inches tall, white, stocky, in his late 30s, with dark
salt-and-pepper hair and wearing a gray, hooded zip-up sweatshirt over jeans
and dirty boots or sneakers.
The man entered Regal Pizza between 9:35 and 9:40 p.m., according to police
and the victims.
Simrelli held up a broad metal sheet with a handle called a pizza peel
later Tuesday. “I broke this over his head. It didn’t faze him,” Simrelli
said, then slid it under a pepperoni pizza, which he pushed onto an oven belt.
Employee Aimee Wales saw her boss strike the man, who then pulled back his
hood. The man grabbed her and put an 8-1/2 to 9-inch knife against her side.
“He reached back to stab her, then turned her around and put the knife up to
her neck and asked her where the money was,” Simrelli said.
Wales emptied the cash register of the night’s earnings, then emptied her
pockets. “I’m still shaking,” she said. The man ran out, and turned right to
run north on North Main Street.
Lispi’s was robbed at 7:16 p.m., police said. An unidentified female
employee said the assailant was about 6 feet tall, with curly, jet-black hair
and had a knife.
In an unrelated incident, Price Chopper in the East End Centre off Kidder
Street was robbed shortly before 9:24 p.m. The male suspect, who did not show
a weapon, was described at 5-foot-6-inches to 5-foot-8-inches tall, black,
stocky, and wearing all black. He may have left with another man in a black
vehicle, which area police were seeking later that night.