Here’s a look at the elusive cat mask robber at work.
The NYPD today released surveillance video from Thursday’s brazen robbery at the Arch shoe store on Astor Place, in the East Village.
Cameras captured the sleek-looking crook prance into the high end shoe shop about 1 p.m., wearing the mask as she browsed among the heels for about a half hour before calmly marching up to the counter, where she handed a note to a cashier and kept her hand inside her purse, all the while, unsuspecting shoppers passed in and out of the store.
“Give me the money, I have a gun,” the note read, according to police.
In the video she can clearly be scene snatching the cash from the employees hand and stuffed it into her purse then grabbed the note before calmly strutting out the door, escaping with just $86, police said.
The brazen theft prompted police to release a sketch of the suspect, donning a mask with cat like features, complete with whiskers, ears and a button nose.
The same female bandit has been linked to two other robberies in Queens but this time wearing a more bizarre disguise.
One Friday, a woman with her head wrapped in a back scarf and only here amber eyes exposed, walked into the Body Shop on Austin Street, just five blocks from the 112th Precinct stationhouse in Forrest Hills and slipped the same threatening note a cashier.
She walked away with $500.
She is also a suspect in the robbery of a 9 West shoe store on Austin Street on April 23, last year. She wore the same black scarf to conceal her identity and escaped with $500, police said.
The suspect is believed to be a middle eastern woman, in her 20’s about 5-foot-7 inches tall and she weighs about 120 pounds, said police.