Portland police Maj. Robert Martin talks about thet arrest at a news conference Tuesday afternoon. Morgan Womack/Staff Writer
Portland police arrested a man who they say threatened customers with a gun at Crown Fried Chicken on Forest Avenue Saturday night.
Anthony Lobor, 25, went into the restaurant on July 6 with a handgun in his waistband, police said at a news conference Tuesday. Once inside, he threatened to shoot customers before he was taken outside by two people who entered the restaurant with him, police said.
Witnesses told police that a gun was discharged at the scene and officers found a bullet casing in the parking lot. No injuries were reported.
Lobor was quickly identified as a suspect, police said.
A surveillance team found Lobor on Monday at 42 Kellogg St., but decided it was too dangerous to try to apprehend him there because several small children were present in the “dense residential neighborhood,” Portland police Maj. Robert Martin said. When Lobor was spotted again later that day, Martin said, he ran to the playground area when the officers tried to take him into custody.
Lobor was arrested after a brief foot chase and charged with criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon, threatening display or possession of a concealed weapon and violating conditions of release. He is currently being held at the Cumberland County Jail, a police spokesperson said.
During a search of his home on Kellogg Street, detectives found handguns and several other firearms, including a fully automatic rifle. They also found firearm components, drugs, cash and evidence of drug trafficking, police said.
Martin said there have been 23 shootings in Portland so far this year, compared to 43 last year. In 2022, the city saw 56 shootings, a recent high, and 17 in 2021. A spokesperson for the department could not provide data Tuesday on the number of people injured or killed in those shootings.
“Any time we have a shooting, we consider it just as serious as a murder,” Martin said at the news conference Tuesday. “These have potential, every time someone discharges a weapon, to kill somebody.”
Martin also expressed concern about a trend of younger offenders. He said the department is noticing a growing percentage of shooters between 16 and 19 years old.
Lobor has lost two brothers, one who was shot in an apartment on Brighton Avenue in 2014 and another who died in 2018 after crashing his car on the same street. Police said at the time that he was also stabbed in the chest but were confident no crime had been committed, a conclusion the family disagreed with. The medical examiner’s officer later ruled his death a suicide.
At a vigil for his brother Patrick in 2018, Anthony Lobor, then a sophomore at Southern Maine Community College, said “Now, I’m the older brother and I am going to take care of my family. We’re going to stay strong.”
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