Man holds coffee shop customers at gunpoint, steals laptops in Oakland

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- A terrifying ordeal at an Oakland coffee shop when a gunman stole laptops from patrons and even made a customer collect them all.

It happened this afternoon at the World Ground Coffee Shop on MacArthur Boulevard near 35th Avenue in the Laurel District.

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"At first I thought it was a joke and then I saw the gun coming out of his pants."

World Ground coffee shop employee Diego Robledo told us he didn't take it seriously at first, but then quickly realized, the man with the orange vest, a mask and gun was no joke.

"And he pointed it at a guy and handed him a bag and said I want all the laptops in a bag right now," said Robledo. "I backed up slowly cause I didn't want his attention and ran for my life."

"I heard the guy say raise your hands and I saw everybody's hands go," said Linda Halpern, who was working on her laptop in a rear room of the restaurant when the robber was ordering people to put their hands in the air.

"And then I heard, that means you too (expletive)! You too (expletive)! You too (expletive)!" said Halpern, "and so I thought, oh, and I raised my hands."

Oakland police spokesperson Johnna Watson confirmed that a man wearing a bandana or mask and an orange work vest over a hoodie and dark clothing-got away with anywhere from eight to 10 laptops.

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It's unclear whether he got away in a vehicle or simply walked away into the neighborhood.

"It was scary," said Uffe Gustafsson, who has owned World Ground for twenty years and never has anything like this happened before.

"I was in the back and I saw him pulling a gun on people in there, so I ran out the back door to call 911," said Gustafsson. "It just went so fast so I think everyone is like shocked."