A Texas lawyer is offering up a reward and some heavy criticism after her son and his friends were robbed at an Oakland gas station.
The robbery happened Monday afternoon at a 76 station inside the city's troubled airport corridor.
"They robbed the kids of everything that they had," said Maxey Scherr, mother of one of the victims and owner of Scherr Law Firm.
Video footage showed the moments five men jumped out of an Infiniti and robbed the group of four friends at gunpoint.
The victims were gassing up their rental SUV before catching a flight out of Oakland.
"It does not have to be the norm where everybody says, 'Oh, that’s just Oakland. Don’t gas in Oakland. You should know better.' We didn’t. We did not know better," Scherr said.
Scherr said her son was hit in the chest with a gun while the thieves smashed the rental car window and started taking jewelry, luggage, IDs and car keys.
Scherr wants to know why there were no signs at the gas station or the Thrifty Car Rental warning their son of potential dangers.
They also feel there was a lack of response from the businesses and the city after the fact.
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"Everyone seemed to just normalize it," Victor Obevoen said. "This is just another day or another incident and no one is really reacting with any sense of urgency. It was mindboggling to me that no one is doing anything about it."
Scherr is offering $10,000 for information that leads to the arrests of the men involved. She's also offering $10,000 for proof the criminals conspired with gas station employees.
Gas station manager Sam Mardaie said not only are the employees not involved but explained they’ve been threatened multiple times by criminals as well, adding their security guard even quit because of it.
"I'm nowhere involved in this," Mardaie said. "We have been managing this station since August. This has been going on before that."
NBC Bay Area asked the mayor for a comment and received a statement noting crime is down in the area by 40% following extra police patrols in the area. But Mardaie said police aren't there everyday and only stay for certain hours. When they leave, criminals come back.
"I just want to see law and order," Mardaie said. "This is the land of the brave and the home of the free. We expect it to be safe here. I just want people to walk into my station and be safe."
A 21st birthday trip to wine country left a sour taste in the tourists' mouths and a family demanding more action from city leaders.
"We're not going to be silenced, we're not going to be told to be quiet, we're not going to have our lives put at risk or taken and say nothing," Scherr said.
