Buenos Aires, Oct 13 (EFE; additional reporting by The Costa Rica Star).– Three armed robbers carrying a baby broke into a clothing store south of Buenos Aires and sat the toddler on the floor while they went through with the holdup, the victim told EFE Tuesday.

Security cameras caught the criminals entering the store and carrying out the robbery, while the little one sat quietly on the floor.

Marcelo Taraborrelli, owner and manager of the store in the municipality of San Francisco Solano – some 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of the Argentine capital – told EFE that the first to enter was a couple carrying the baby and “acting like customers.”

After asking several questions, they told the salesman that “they would come back in a little while” because “they were going to get money from the teller,” but when Taraborrelli opened the door to let them out, a third criminal came in.

One hit the salesman and tied him up while the other two packed up their booty while the baby was left on the floor.

“He didn’t walk, we think he was 9 months to a year old,” Taraborrelli said.

“It was their strategy – it’s obvious that the woman carrIed the baby to make it look like everything was all right. He was unfortunately the gang’s innocent accomplice,” he said.

 

Taraborrelli reckoned his losses in this holdup at 50,000 pesos (some $5,300) and said he had suffered slight contusions from the times they hit him. He added that this was not the first time his store has been robbed. EFE

As it happens, the robbery seems like a case of criminal life imitating art. The 1958 Italian film masterpiece I soliti ignoti, known in English as Big Deal on Madonna Street, stars Marcello Mastroianni as an inept thief trying to pull off a heist while caring for his baby son while his wife is in jail

In 2002, I soliti ignoti was remade in the United States as Welcome to Collinwood, in which William H. Macy plays the part of a bumbling crook who babysits his infant son while needing $1,000 to pay his own wife’s jail fine. The film was produced by George Clooney.