BELLEVUE, Wash. — A woman was arrested and charged after pulling a gun on a gas station employee. Now prosecutors accuse her of threatening to kill the clerk after he kicked her out of the store for not wearing a mask, according to court documents.
Charges were filed on Feb. 1 against 33-year-old Angela Marie Nommensen for the Jan. 27 incident.
According to court documents, around 11 p.m. on Jan. 27, Bellevue police responded to a report of a disturbance at a gas station in the 13900 block of Northeast 20th Street.
The document say Nommensen came in last week looking for a printed receipt, but because she wasn’t wearing a mask, the clerk declined to serve her.
“When she went in, the clerk immediately let her know she needed to have a mask on and asked her to leave or put on a mask. And she refused. He told her if she wanted to stay she needed to have the mask on, asked her to leave repeatedly. She refused every time,” said Capt. Darryl McKinney with the Bellevue Police Department.
After several minutes, the employee physically escorted her out of the store by grabbing the left shoulder of her coat.
“Which he is allowed to do, it’s private property,” McKinney said.
But then surveillance video shows Nommensen hitting the employee as he’s trying to get back inside.
Once he was through the door, she pulled out the gun, briefly pointing it at the store.
Court documents say the employee told police, “He thought she was going to shoot him” and “feared he was about to die.”
“Crazy that it happened,” said Alex Dew, who works at a nearby business and frequents the AM/PM. He watched the surveillance video and said he would’ve called police.
“I don’t agree with the whole dragging her out of the store even if it’s justified,” Dew said. “I think both parties could’ve dealt with it a little better. Definitely sad situation, though,” he said.
Bellevue police say the clerk was not in the wrong, but added that the safer option is to give them a call rather than handling a similar situation yourself.
“Because you don’t know. There is no way for him to know she has a hand gun on her. Let us come out and deal with it and hopefully you save yourself a whole lot of heart ache,” McKinney said.
Documents say it was actually Nommensen who called 911 after the incident, telling police that she feared for her life. However, Bellevue police say the video shows otherwise.
“By the time she had pulled the gun out, from what I saw in the video, he had already gone back in the store. She was not in danger that I could tell at that point,” McKinney said.
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