Woman Swinging Knife Forces Way Into Taco Bell Drive-Thru Window: Police

Police in North Carolina are searching for a knife-wielding woman who climbed through the drive-thru window at a Taco Bell and stole a drawer of cash from the register.

Winston-Salem Police Department responded at 4:24 p.m. Saturday to a report of an armed robbery at the restaurant at 345 Akron Drive, according to a news release issued by the department.

Investigators said the suspect was “swinging a knife” as she entered the restaurant’s drive-thru window, where she was able to retrieve a drawer from the cash register during the incident.

Police described the suspect as a female in her 40s, wearing a green shirt and holding a “large knife.”

The woman escaped with an unknown amount of money after fleeing in a brown SUV that was waiting in the area.

Employees of the Taco Bell were unharmed during the incident, police said.

“No additional information is available for release at this time,” according to the news release.

The investigation remains ongoing.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Winston-Salem Police Department at 336-773-7700 or to use the department’s Text-A-Tip program at (336) 276-1717.

Tips can be provided anonymously to Crime Stoppers at (336) 727-2800 or online.

The Taco Bell robbery is one of several incidents of crime at restaurants in recent weeks in Winston-Salem, a municipality in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina, as well as across the U.S.

According to WFMY News 2, a firefighter was shot and another man injured March 26 outside Kermit’s Hot Dog House at 2200 Thomasville Road.

Ross Michael Flynt and other firefighters were on duty and eating outside, and the second victim, Patrick Dawarde Carter, had just left with his food when someone in a blue car shot at customers before fleeing the scene.

Both victims survived, and police arrested Elijah Tyshawn Stanton, 18, of High Point, and Kristan Jevon Allen, 21, of Winston-Salem, as well as Keon Rush, 18, identified as the driver of the blue car.

Stanton and Allen were charged with assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury with intent to kill as well as discharging a firearm into an occupied property.

Other violent incidents at drive-thrus have occurred in recent months at fast-food restaurants.

On March 31, the Dallas Police Department investigated the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old at a Raising Cane’s drive-thru, where Zuri Andrew Goff was shot multiple times while sitting in a car.

That report followed several others, including one in January at a Missouri McDonald’s, where an employee was shot and injured in a discount dispute.

And in Los Angeles in January, a Taco Bell customer shot and killed an employee who declined counterfeit money for payment.