Armed Robber Holds Up Convenience Store For Rice Balls

An armed man held a 7-Eleven clerk at knifepoint this week during a terrifying late-night robbery, but it turned out all he wanted was some rice balls worth less than $3.

According to Rocket News 24, the young man seemed like a normal late-night customer at a 7-Eleven in Saitama, Japan, until he pulled two knives on the two women working at the register and said, "Onigiri will do."

One of the clerks was sure she'd misheard him asking for rice balls and asked if he meant he wanted money. Instead the man made the women turn around and ran to the refrigerator, where he grabbed one rice ball filled with shrimp and mayonnaise and two filled with tuna and mayonnaise and ran out the door. The three rice balls were worth about 300 yen, or $2.94, altogether.

The robber very nearly got away with his crime, but he had not noticed a man delivering baked goods was in the store at the time. That man followed the robber out of the store and called police, who caught the robber just 300 meters from the store he'd just robbed.

Police say the robber was very drunk at the time, but they're still investigating possible motives for his robbing a convenience store for $3 worth of snacks.