Illinois children’s lemonade stand ‘robbed at GUNPOINT’ by ‘slightly older kids’

TWO boys were robbed of the fruits of their labor when older boys apparently held up their lemonade stand at gunpoint.

The children were selling lemonade in the East Bluff section of Peoria, Illinois, on Friday afternoon when two other boys approached them with a gun, the Peoria Journal Star reported.

The two bullies took money from the stand, which was set up on the corner of Forrest Hill and California Avenues, and ran off, police said.

The culprits were “slightly older boys” who “flashed a gun” that might or might not have been real, one of the victims’ fathers, Nathan Peterson, said in a Facebook post.

“While I am disgusted and alarmed, I was comforted and encouraged by the police officers and the community,” Peterson wrote.

Community members took pity on the children who had been robbed and helped them break even.

So many people bought lemonade that they made back the money that had been stolen, Peterson said.

Peoria police are investigating the theft.

Sadly, lemonade stand robberies are not unheard of.

A man with a BB gun stole all $17 of a nine-year-old boy’s earnings from his lemonade stand in North Carolina in summer 2018.

Another group of children aged nine to 13 had $180 stolen from their lemonade stand in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2019, also by a grown man.