Thief: FILE PHOTO: A thief took off with a cash box belonging to Girl Scouts selling cookies in Rockville, Maryland. (Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag)
ROCKVILLE, Md. — Police said a man stole money raised by a Girl Scout troop that was selling cookies outside a Maryland grocery store on Sunday.
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Police in Rockville said a man swiped a cash box containing money earned from cookie sales from a stand outside a Safeway grocery store, The Washington Post reported.
According to the Montgomery County Police Department, officers were called to the grocery store just before 2 p.m. EST, WUSA-TV reported. The victim said she noticed a man sitting on a bench near the stand for about 20 minutes before he got up, snatched the box and fled the scene, according to the television station.
Police in Montgomery County said a man snatched the cash box off the table and ran away. Police are still searching for him. https://t.co/PkbFt69pFX
It was unclear how much money was taken, WUSA reported. Officers searched the area for the man and tried to find surveillance video of him leaving the scene, Montgomery County police spokesperson Lauren Ivey, told the Post in an email.
“We have close to 24,000 girls selling Girl Scout cookies right now and this is the first incident,” Lidia Soto-Harmon, the CEO for the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital, told WJLA-TV. “I have been the CEO for 12 years, and I’ve done a lot of crisis communication pieces, and this is the first time I’ve heard of something like this happening to one of our Girl Scouts.”
No one was hurt, the Post reported.
“You would think on a Sunday afternoon this wouldn’t happen, but we can’t control certain things and unfortunately these things sometimes do happen,” Soto-Harmon told the newspaper. “I think there’s something that tugs on the hearts of people when they see there are girls out there trying to fund their dreams, and when something like this happens, it really upsets people.”
Soto-Harmon told WJLA that Girl Scout policy calls for adult chaperones to accompany any underage girls who sell cookies in public. She said that two adult chaperones were with the two middle-school-aged victims at the time of the theft.
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