Shootout at Internet Cafe: CHECK EMAIL OR DIE TRYIN'

As I read this story, the lyrics of a great street poet--50 Cent--come to mind:

Fuck, boy, you can see it to believe it;
Tryna dodge and wave it, end up a paraplegic;
Believe me it's easy, I'll hurt you, I'll merk you;
I'll pop summin', drop summin', I ain't gonna stop huntin'




An attempted armed robbery of an Internet café in Seminole County early Tuesday left one of the suspected robbers dead and deputies combing Pine Hills for his accomplices.

Gary Bryant, 21, was one of two men who walked into the Allied Veterans Internet Café at 3030 East Semoran Boulevard about 1 a.m. and later ended up dead after a shootout with a security guard.

The Seminole County Sheriff's Office has since released surveillance video of the gun battle, which took place at the strip-mall business.

The video shows Bryant and the other man entering the building. They immediately become involved in a conflict with a security guard.

Gunfire erupts, and the security guard fires a round and that strikes Bryant in the back as he heads for the door to exit the business.

Before leaving the scene in an older-model tan Oldsmobile, one of the robbers fires several gunshots into the business.

The Seminole Sheriff's Office said one of its investigators saw the vehicle and tried to stop it, but the driver sped off.

Shortly afterward, deputies said the vehicle arrived at a Value Inn on Clarcona-Ocoee Road near U.S. Highway 441, where the two other men inside the vehicle left Bryant's body.

Orange County deputies chased two men in the car, but the men fled in the vehicle — which deputies later determined was stolen — into the Pine Hills area of west Orange and ran away on foot.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office used K-9 units to try to track the two men, who remained at large Tuesday.

Bryant, meanwhile, was declared dead at a hospital.

He was on probation for robbery, according to the Seminole sheriff's office. Public records also show that he was arrested as a juvenile on charges including resisting an officer without violence, vehicle theft and robbery with a firearm. He also has been charged as an adult, including a December 2009 arrest for escape.

Details of that arrest were not immediately available Tuesday.

Internet cafés have become targets of criminals in recent years because they're known for having thousands of dollars at any given time, critics of them say.

Tuesday's incident was at least the third robbery or robbery attempt at an Internet café in Florida this year.

via orlandosentinel