Nichols Hills Store Owner Is On Guard After String Of Thefts

One store in the high-end Nichols Hills Plaza shopping center is making it no secret about their guns after recent robberies.

“Twenty rounds, ready to go,” Steve Haggard, owner of S.J. Haggard and Company, said as he held the gun he keeps on property for security.

Haggard told News 9 he has ordered a sticker to be put up in his window warning thieves that employees are armed.

“I'm pretty sure it reads, ‘Rob at your risk. We are considered armed and dangerous,'” Haggard said. “I think there are some desperate people out there.”

Haggard will celebrate 25 years in the Nichols Hills Plaza in November.

The latest robbery at the shopping center occurred inside BeBe’s, a home décor store, about 4 p.m. Saturday.

Employee said a suspicious looking man entered the store and appeared to be shopping.

“No, we wasn’t. He was watching how the register worked,” BeBe's employee Mary Kay Samis said.

Samis thinks the man swiped money from the register and then took off. Employees didn’t realize the store had been robbed until later.

Even though the man wasn’t armed, Haggard thinks telling shoppers a gun is on the premises is necessary.

“They look for the most vulnerable place,” Haggard said. 

Haggard told News 9 about a month ago, another thief acted as if he had a gun when he robbed another Plaza store.

Other store owners in the same shopping center think the stickers go too far.

“It’s not a junk yard or steel mill. We are a luxury men’s clothing store. I don’t think we need to threaten our potential customers,” Spencer Stoner, owner of another men’s clothing store in Nichols Hills Plaza, said.