Robbers Enter Through Roof : Crime: Suspects cut hole in top of Pasadena check cashing business. They steal $5,000, police say.

PASADENA — In what Pasadena police called an unusual crime, two masked gunmen cut a hole in a roof last weekend to enter a local check cashing business, where they handcuffed and gagged two employees before fleeing with $5,000.

“We’ve had roof burglars” who have cut holes in roofs to burglarize businesses after hours, police Lt. Van Anthony said. “But we’ve never had anybody cut a hole in a roof as a means of doing an armed robbery.”

Anthony said that sometime Friday night or early Saturday the robbers cut a hole in the roof and ceiling over the back office of Big Ben’s Check Cashing in the 400 block of East Orange Grove Avenue.

The men hid in the space between the roof and the ceiling until the business opened Saturday morning, then--armed with handguns and wearing ski masks--dropped into the office, surprising a female employee, Anthony said.

“They dropped into the office behind the customer area, so none of the customers knew they were there,” Anthony said.

The men took about $5,000 from an open safe and demanded at gunpoint that the woman open the firm’s other safes. When she responded that she did not know the combinations, the robbers handcuffed her and gagged her with duct tape.

Moments later, a second employee wandered into the office, and the robbers demanded that she open the safes. When the woman declined, she was also cuffed and gagged.

The robbers took what money they had and escaped by climbing back through the hole in the roof, Anthony said.

The two employees were freed a few minutes later when they walked to the front of the business and a customer called the police.

The women were not injured, police said. No arrests have been made.

A similar robbery, or burglary, attempt may have been foiled Wednesday after sheriff’s SWAT team members surrounded another check cashing firm in Pasadena after an alarm sounded in an office where, earlier, a hole had been found in the roof. But by the time officers surrounded Security Check Cashing, in the 900 block of North Lake Avenue, the premises were vacant.

Police first responded to the location after a motion detector was activated shortly before dawn, sheriff’s spokeswoman Deputy Irma Becerra said.

“It is believed the suspect, or suspects, may have entered during the night through a pre-existing hole in the roof,” Becerra said.

Pasadena police explained that the business owner noticed the hole in the roof on Tuesday and covered it temporarily.

Times Staff Writer Vicki Torres contributed to this article.