24 February 2023
LENEXA, Kan. — Law enforcement have made an arrest in a violent GameStop robbery in Lenexa.
While the Johnson County district attorney has charged one man in the crime, police are still searching for a second suspect.
Investigators said on Feb. 12, the pair tied up employees at the GameStop on Quivira Road before taking off with armfuls of video game consoles.
The man now charged is 30-year-old Sylvester Pickett from Kansas City, Kansas. He’s being held on a $200,000 bond while police push to figure out who is the other man in the surveillance video seen above.
“It was just a few hours before the Super Bowl,” said Officer Danny Chavez, spokesman for the Lenexa Police Department.
“Tied [an employee] up, dragged him to the back of the store. One of the other clerks was actually slammed to the ground. So this is a very violent robbery,” Chavez said.
A customer even entered the store during the robbery. That person was also held captive as the suspects took armfuls of PlayStation consoles and virtual reality gear.
FOX4 asked managers at an independent game shop, Re-Sell Electronics in Independence, for their opinion on the situation.
“From the video that I saw on Facebook, it looks like they knew exactly what they wanted and what they were looking for — the highest, most expensive thing they have at GameStop,” said Elijah Newton, manager of Re-Cell Electronics.
“Most of the kind of stuff that they would be getting, they’d almost have to sell on like eBay, Craigslist, Amazon — something like that,” Newton said.
“It’s going to raise a lot of red flags to have the same item — a bunch of them — especially on something that’s in short supply and expensive and the fact that they probably are willing to take far less than what it’s worth,” Newton added. “That’s going to raise a lot of questions for people.”
Those are a few of the factors Lenexa police want the public to consider as they phish for tips on the identity of the second man, the more slender of the two wearing dark clothing in the video.
Police note his movement.
“We’re not sure if that’s an actual limp or just his gait,” Chavez said.
The GameStop’s cash register was also hit. The total estimate for how much the suspects got away with is more than $10,000 worth of money and gear.