Police Seek Grocery Robbers Who Killed Five

Police interviewed survivors and combed the city Saturday for two armed robbers who may have posed as cleaners to get into a closed grocery store where they killed five employees and wounded two others, authorities said.

Two employees of the National Supermarket store, working in a back room, escaped injury by climbing onto the roof, police said. After the gunmen fled in a car, the two called down to a woman on the street to telephone police.

The robbers entered the store shortly after 11 p.m. Friday, about an hour after it had closed, said Capt. Charles McCrary, who is heading the investigation.

“Possibly the security guard may have let them in thinking they were cleaners,” McCrary said. He said the men held the seven employees at gunpoint near the service desk at the front of the store and took an undetermined amount of cash.

“Then they were all directed to lie down on the floor, and they were shot,” McCrary said.

Four of the victims died at the scene and a fifth died a short time later at a nearby hospital, McCrary said. They were identified as Rose Brown, 49, head cashier; Kenneth Bass, 27, a cleaning man; Michael Beam, 34, a stock manager; Michael Marr, 16, a bag boy, and David Spahn, 27, a security guard.

The assistant store manager, Harold Meyer, 30, and Richard Fortson, 32, a service manager, also were shot. Meyer was in critical but stable condition and Fortson in serious but stable condition, police said. They would not disclose the name of the hospital where they were being treated.

The store, a large modern supermarket, is in a residential area about 10 minutes north of downtown.

Based on interviews with the survivors and the workers who climbed onto the roof, police issued partial descriptions of the robbers, who did not wear masks.