The State - News from Dec. 30, 1986

A roller-skating bandit wielding a harmless starter’s pistol was in jail after he tried to mug the wrong people--two San Francisco police officers in street clothes. “To my knowledge, this is the first time we’ve ever had anybody come up and pull a robbery on roller skates, certainly not on officers,” said police Inspector Robert Checchi. He said Ernest Abrams, 22, of San Francisco, rolled up to Officers Mark Mino and Mary Heffernan, pointed the fake pistol at them and said: “This is a mugging. I have a .22. Give me all your money.” Mino knocked the gun away, and a violent struggle ensued until the two officers subdued the 6-foot-2 assailant, Checchi said. “They believed the gun was real right through the whole thing and didn’t find out it was a fake until they examined it afterward,” Checchi said. “It was a replica of a .22- or a .25-caliber automatic.”