Women steal clothing, pepper-spray Dick’s Sporting Goods employees

Published 10:23 am Monday, March 18, 2019

SALISBURY — The Rowan County Sheriff’s Office is looking for four women after a theft at Dick’s Sporting Goods on Sunday.

Four women, whom the Sheriff’s Office has not yet identified, entered Dick’s Sporting Goods off Julian Road about 2 p.m. Sunday. The Sheriff’s Office said the women walked around the store and, at one point, one of them left and later re-entered the building.

The manager of the store told deputies that the women were acting suspicious. An incident report said the manager believed the women were concealing items.

The Sheriff’s Office said the manager locked the store’s doors so that the women, who were trying to leave with clothing in hand, could not exit without paying.

The women pepper-sprayed the manager in his eyes, and he stumbled around and fell to the ground, the Sheriff’s Office said.

Two of the women ran around the store’s cash registers and left through another set of doors. The other two were able to leave through the doors the manager had locked, the Sheriff’s Office said. During their escape, two other store employees were pepper-sprayed.

The women made off with clothing worth an estimated $1,500. They left in a gray-colored, four-door Honda Accord with the tag removed and a burgundy, four-door car, the Sheriff’s Office said.

No arrests have been made in the thefts.