POLAND — Four masked teenagers from the Oxford Hills region were arrested late Monday night and charged with robbing the Big Apple store at Five Corners at gunpoint.
The Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department identified the four as Cote Hall, 18, of Oxford, two 16-year-old males from South Paris and Norway, and a 17-year-old male from Oxford. All four are charged with Class A robbery, punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
Hall was held Tuesday morning at Androscoggin County Jail in Auburn on bail of $5,000 cash or $25,000 property. The three juveniles are being held at Long Creek Youth Development Facility in South Portland.
County deputies received a call that the store at 1510 Maine St. had been robbed shortly before 11:30 p.m. by four males wearing dark hooded sweatshirts, their faces covered by bandannas. At least one brandished a gun, according to a news release from the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department.
A cashier and two customers were in the store at the time. No one was injured.
The four teens left with an undisclosed amount of cash and cigarettes and fled in a white car, police said.
Deputies on Route 124 in Mechanic Falls observed a white car fitting the description of the one from the robbery and stopped it on Route 124 in Minot. They determined that the four males inside the car were involved in the robbery.
A search warrant for the car resulted in finding an Airstrike soft pistol that shoots pellets and a Daisy pellet gun, sheriff’s Sgt. Rielly Bryant said Tuesday evening. Both look like real handguns, he said.
The registered owner of the car had not been confirmed, he said, and the investigation is continuing.
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