Police say clerk at Jeannette convenience store thwarted robbery

Jeannette police arrested a city man early Monday after a convenience store clerk accused him of grabbing a money bag containing $1,565 from the cash register and attempting to run from the store, according to police.

Andre J. Sanders, 43, was taken into custody by police just outside the Jeannette Food Mart on Harrison Avenue about 2:30 a.m.

Patrolman Tom Yaniszeski said officers were responding to a report of two men fighting on the sidewalk outside the store and found the clerk and Sanders outside. The clerk told police Saunders had grabbed the money bag and that he attempted to stop him.

Yaniszeski said Sanders denied any money was taken and said the store security video “would show he didn’t take anything.”

However, when city patrolman Brian DeFelice searched Sanders, a blue money bag was found inside his left pant leg, Yaniszeski said.

“When the bag was pulled from inside his pants, all the cash fell out,” Yaniszeski wrote in court documents.

Police confiscated the security video.

The clerk told police that he saw Sanders reach through the window shield at the counter and grab the bag. The clerk reported that Sanders “attempted to fight him to get away.”

Police reported all of the cash inside the bag was recovered.

Sanders was charged with receiving stolen property, robbery and theft. He was ordered held in the county jail on $25,000 bond. A preliminary hearing is scheduled May 12.

According to online dockets, Sanders was sentenced to serve up to 23 months in prison for stealing $1,900 from a woman in Hempfield and then resisting arrest after kicking a trooper who took him into custody in November 2020.

He previously served time in state prison for a Greensburg robbery in 2003, records show. Sanders was sentenced to three to six years.

Sanders did not have an attorney listed in court documents.