A San Jose Police Department spokesman says two high-school students are lucky to be alive today after officers with their guns drawn abruptly ended a mock robbery the teenagers were staging.
Officer Louis Quezada said the officers were called to a reported armed robbery in progress on Jan. 29 about 9:56 a.m. at a Baskin Robbins ice cream store on the corner of Payne Avenue and Winchester Boulevard. The person calling in the report described the suspects as two Hispanic youths, wearing ski masks, who were holding a gun on the clerk and stuffing money in a bag.
Quezada said that as the first officer to arrive was pulling up to the front of the store, he saw the two teenagers, one of whom appeared to be armed with an Uzi-style machine gun, go back into the store and apparently rob the clerk again.
The officer waited for backup to arrive, Quezada said. When several more officers were on the scene with their guns drawn, the two "suspects" ran out of the front door into the squadron of waiting police.
Fortunately the youths, who turned out to be filming a mock 1930s-style robbery for a school social-studies class project, realized their gig was up and did not resist, Quezada said. The machine gun turned out to be a realistic plastic replica.
Quezada said the two "robbers" and the clerk are Saratoga High School students who were making a video for their class.
One student's father is reportedly in management at the store where the scene was shot, but he was not present during the mock robbery. "The incident was a surprise to the father, too," Quezada said. "We're just glad no one was hurt."
The students apparently were staging a retake of the robbery scene when the first officer arrived.
Quezada said the officers escorted the teenagers to Saratoga High School, where Principal Kevin Skelly verified that they were not gangsters in training, but authenticity-seeking students who should have notified authorities about their project.
"The students were on an assignment, but staging a robbery was in no way a part of their coursework," Skelly said.
The students, all juniors, had a day off from classes because teachers were attending in-service training.
As a precaution, Quezada said, officers plan to contact all San Jose area schools to remind students, faculty and administrators that mock crimes should be cleared with the police first.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, February 7, 1996.
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