Man with barbeque fork robs Berlin supermarket

A Berlin robber armed only with a barbeque fork attempted to hold up a supermarket on Thursday night.

He was initially succesful in the robbery of a discount supermarket with the cashier handing over cash, police said.

But he was thwarted in his getaway when a fellow employee pushed him into a supermarket trolley and he dropped his loot.

Police said he fled the scene.

In January a man armed with a barbeque fork stabbed his housemate at a train station in the southern German town of Amerang.

Barbequeing, known as grillen, is a popular pastime in Germany. It seems robbing supermarkets in Berlin is too.

In February two Berlin supermarkets and two Berlin convenience stores were robbed within hours of each other, though they used the time-honored method of guns and knives for intimadation.

Barbeque forks have often been used as weapons around the world. A US police officer accidentally shot a barbeque-fork-wielding man in 2015. In Australia a man was stabbed 15 times with a barbeque fork after a drug deal gone wrong in 2013. And in 2015 a dispute over "the last rib" at a barbeque ended with an American woman stabbing a guest with a barbeque fork.

A man armed with a kebab knife killed a man and injured five others in the southwest German town of Reutlingen in 2016. 

aw/rt (dpa)