Toothless Bandit Holds Up Underwear Store

An Upper East Side lingerie shop was robbed yesterday by a man posing as a vacuum cleaner salesman. In what the New York Post describes as a "Panty Raid," a black man in his 40s or 50s was let into Lingerie & Company on 3rd Ave. and 71st St., where he bound the 77-year-old clerk in the back room and robbed the store of cash and merchandise. The Daily News writes that the "Park Ave. matron" was fooled into buzzing the robber in when he gestured that he was delivering a Dirt Devil vacuum.

As he was tying her up, the knife-wielding burglar cut the elderly clerk on her hand. She also suffered bruises to her head. Police think the stick-up man may be responsible for three similar robberies in the neighborhood. After the robber left, the clerk managed to free herself and hit the alarm button. She was eventually treated for her injuries at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell. Jackie Hill was described as a sprightly and stylish grandmother, with two grown children. A visitor at the hospital said she'd be all right, although a woman passing by the store said that as someone who also works in retail, being bound in the back of her store was her "top nightmare."