California

Film crew shooting commercial loses $54,000 in gear to gunman, California cops say

Accident or crime scene cordon tape, police line do not cross. It is nighttime, emergency lights of police cars flashing blue, red and white in the background Photo by Getty Images This is a stock image downloaded from Getty Images. It is a Royalty Free image. Getty Images | Royalty Free
Accident or crime scene cordon tape, police line do not cross. It is nighttime, emergency lights of police cars flashing blue, red and white in the background Photo by Getty Images This is a stock image downloaded from Getty Images. It is a Royalty Free image. Getty Images | Royalty Free Getty Images/iStockphoto

A film crew shooting a commercial Thursday in San Francisco came face to face with two thieves who stole $54,000 in camera gear at gunpoint, police say.

The robbers struck about 10:30 a.m. at Pierce Street and Toledo Way in the Marina district, Commander Raj Vaswani of the San Francisco Police Department wrote on Twitter.

The film crew was interviewing a woman who is blind for a commercial when two men approached, police reported on Twitter. One brandished a firearm and ordered the crew to step back.

The two men stole $54,000 in equipment, including cameras, audio gear, a laptop, a backpack and headphones before fleeing in a black Honda hatchback with paper plates from Toyota Vallejo, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

None of the eight people involved in filming the commercial were hurt, Vaswani wrote on Twitter.

Police asked that anyone with information on the robbery call the SFPD 24-hour tip line at 415-575-4444 or text to TIP411 and begin the text message with “SFPD.”

In April 2019, robbers stole a camera from a KPIX television news crew in Oakland in what was then the latest in a series of robberies of TV crews in the Bay Area, the East Bay Times reported.

This story was originally published November 16, 2020 at 12:01 PM with the headline "Film crew shooting commercial loses $54,000 in gear to gunman, California cops say."

DS
Don Sweeney
The Sacramento Bee
Don Sweeney has been a newspaper reporter and editor in California for more than 35 years. He is a service reporter based at The Sacramento Bee.
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