As a company that sells video games, consoles, and accessories,GameStopis unfortunately a very attractive target for robbers, a fact that was reaffirmed by a regrettable incident that happened on May 28, 2025.
Wearing masks and hooded sweatshirts, three armed robbers hit up a GameStop store located at 7048 Broadway in Lemon Grove, California, nabbing approximately $4500 inNintendo Switch consolesand controllers. According to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, the thieves restrained the two GameStop store employees with zip ties while holding them at gunpoint.
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Sgt. Samuel Lizarraga said that a 911 call came in to dispatch at around 9:05 p.m. on Saturday, February 1, though no details were given on who made the call. Investigation of therobberyled deputies to a house in National City where three suspects taken into custody. Gerald Haynes, 27, was arrested on suspicion of robbery; Margie Daniels, 31, was arrested for suspicion of possession of stolen property; and James Calloway was apprehended for felony warrants in an unrelated case. No information was given on how the police tracked down the suspects.
This is sadly not the first time that aGameStophas been hit by robbers hoping to make a quick buck. In March 2019, a resident of Downey, California, was arrested for carrying out four armed robberies at GameStop stores located in both Los Angeles and Orange Counties between August and October 2018. Frederick Lopez, Jr., then 27, made off with approximately $132,000 in cash and merchandise, including victims’ cellphones.
Lopez’s fingerprint was recovered from aNintendo Entertainment Systemat the scene of one of the robberies, in Brea, and he was later identified by witnesses and victims of the crime. In January 2020, after pleading guilty to one count of interference with commerce by robbery and one count of brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence,Lopez was sentenced to 10 years in federal prisonand ordered to pay $132,000 in restitution. Lopez was apparently accompanied by a second suspect during some of his robberies, but that accomplice is yet to be identified.
A couple of more bizarreGameStoprobberies occurred just this week in New Jersey and Delaware when a man and woman held up one store armed with a machete and robbed a second store while wielding a hatchet with a green rope tied around the handle. Byron Savage, 38, and Victoria L. Titus, 39, do not seem to have taken any video game hardware but rather fled the scenes carrying bags of cash and customers’ wallets. The pair were tracked down because they left the easily identifiable hatchet in plain view in a Honda Civic they had abandoned behind a nearby business.
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