With a population of 20,000 people, Arbutus has a small town feel on the outskirts of Baltimore, so a beat-down robbery is enough to shake its foundations.
"It is heartbreaking to see people willing to take people's money just for the sake of taking it," said David Wieland.
Especially when initial reports placed the crime near its beloved elementary school.
"If that's happening then I think we should be aware of it, especially when we have kids, you know?" said Georganna Kikas who has a grandchild at the school.
But Baltimore County police say those reports have missed their mark.
The call for help on Monday night actually came from Colony Hill Court and Potomac Avenue.
A man in his twenties claimed he fell in with the wrong company when he met up with a female acquaintance and her boyfriend.
"They decided that they were going to go get some alcohol and go to a park and drink,” said Officer Jennifer Peach of the Baltimore County Police Department, “Once they got to the park, he advises that the boyfriend hit him over the head with a rock and then started to dig through his pockets. He says he took $2 and a pocket knife, but what he was really trying to get was medication that he had just gotten from the pharmacy earlier that evening."
Police contacted the female suspect and she offered up a very different story, pointing to a chance meeting that led to an encounter behind the Hollywood Theater.
"She is stating that none of that happened. That she had met the victim initially and was behind a building with him when he made advances on her that she found inappropriate,” said Peach. “And then she called for her boyfriend who happened to be nearby who came and then hit the victim over the head and that was what the incident was really about."
With such conflicting reports, at this point, police say they don't know who the victim was, but pharmaceuticals obviously played a role in the incident and there was nothing random about it.
