Police say they have arrested a thief who evaded capture despite a 12-hour SWAT standoff last month outside a 7-Eleven in downtown Long Beach.
The saga began early in the morning on Sept. 23, when workers fleeing the 7-Eleven on the corner of Pine Avenue and Broadway flagged down officers and told them a man armed with a gun had attempted to rob the store, according to Long Beach police.
The suspect holed up inside the store while a SWAT team lobbed tear gas and eventually went inside to search for him. When the search turned up empty, police also scoured two neighboring businesses, a Pinkberry frozen yogurt shop and Broadway Pizza.
Video from Broadway Pizza showed scores of SWAT officers entering the business and searching the kitchen, but they found nobody.
Mike Rosetti, owner of Broadway Pizza, said he lost a full day of business as police staked out the corner at Pine Avenue and Broadway.
When he was able to reenter his business, it stank of tear gas; there was a broken ceiling tile — he presumed left by SWAT officers who’d searched inside — and dirty towels were strewn on the ground.
He started cleaning up and didn’t think much more of it until the next day, when he entered his back office and saw papers oddly shuffled around. Minutes later, one of his employees told him there was no cash in the register.
That’s when Rosetti checked his security cameras and saw something he said was chilling.
A robbery suspect was captured on video walking out of Brodway Pizza restaurant after a lengthy SWAT standoff on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025. Video still frame courtesy of Broadway Pizza.
Shortly after officers had given up the hunt, a man Rosetti assumes was the robber walked in through the rear door of Broadway Pizza. Rosetti had left it open, hoping to air out the tear gas smell. He’d unwittingly given the robber access to the restaurant from a rear stairwell that connects to a closed-down nightclub and shared storage space on the building’s second floor.
Rosetti is pretty sure the armed thief hid out in the stairwell and storage room for more than 12 hours while police searched the 7-Eleven, Broadway Pizza and Pinkberry.
Rosetti’s video showed the man was able to casually stroll into his pizza shop after the standoff, grab an employee’s backpack, fill it with cash and retreat to the stairwell — all while Rosetti and one of his workers were just a few feet away in another room.
Later that day, still unaware, Rosetti locked up the stairwell door. He thinks the armed man was hiding inside, just a few feet away. Rosetti said he isn’t sure where the robber went after he closed the door, but there’s an exit to the alleyway from the stairwell, making it trivially easy for him to sneak away once it got dark.
SWAT officers stand outside a 7-Eleven at Pine Avenue and Broadway where a suspected robber was believed to be holed up inside on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.
Detectives eventually tracked down the suspected thief a week later, on Sept. 30, at a bus station in Los Angeles, police said.
There, they arrested the 21-year-old Los Angeles man, identified as Saveon McQuincey King, on suspicion of robbery, being a felon in possession of a firearm, violation of parole and assault with a firearm. They did not announce the arrest until today.
Police did not disclose how they discovered King’s identity or how they tracked him to the Los Angeles bus station.
On Oct. 9, King accepted a plea deal offered by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. King pleaded no contest to one count of second-degree robbery and was sentenced to 6 years in state prison.