CLEVELAND — An 80-year-old man was robbed at gunpoint, adding another violent crime to the summer crime spate that has hit the city’s trendy Tremont neighborhood.
The victim, Stephen Lazor, said it’s the second time he’s been robbed in the neighborhood in the past year.
“There’s been a lot of crime around here. A lot,” he said Friday.
Lazor, who lives in Parma Heights, said he was inside a rental garage he owns Tuesday afternoon in the 2400 block of Tremont Avenue when two men confronted him. The men asked “where’s the money” and were threatening to kill him if he didn’t comply, police said. The men kept their hands in their pockets, intimating that they were armed.
“I didn’t get smart with them. They might have shot me,” Lazor said.
The victim told police he surrendered a paper bag containing $200 and another $5 from his wallet. The robbers then took the man’s cell phone, ordered him to the ground, and then fled.
Both men were described as white, “dirty looking” and in their 30s.
Police say the garage has surveillance cameras that may have captured the robbery.
Lazor said he was robbed in the neighborhood last summer. The armed men took $2,000 he planned to pay his workers.
“I can replace $2,000. I can’t replace my life, so I said the hell with it and gave them the money,” he said.
The latest robbery follows a series of heists that have plagued the posh neighborhood all summer.
Last month, five men were indicted for a series of robberies.