Robber hits area card shop

The newly-relocated Paper Garden card store received an unfortunate "welcome" to the neighborhood this week. The store, located at 3402 Sansom Street, was robbed at gunpoint at 3:10 p.m. on Monday. A female employee reported that a man entered the store, pulled out a gun, reached over the counter and removed money from the register. He got away with $300 in cash. The employee described the suspect as a black man with a medium complexion, 6'1" and 160 lbs. At the time of the incident, he was wearing dark-colored pants, a navy blue knit cap and a three-quarter length black leather jacket. The Paper Garden incident is the latest in a string of recent robberies, many of which involved individual victims rather than stores. The store, formerly known as University of Cards, is also the fourth victim of an on-campus retail robbery this semester. Baskin Robbins and Commerce Bank were robbed in separate incidents last month -- with $200 and $700 taken respectively. Fingers, Wings and Other Things was also the victim of an attempted armed robbery in September. Penn Det. Supervisor Frank DeMeo said yesterday that he does not believe this incident is related to any of the other robberies. DeMeo said the recent spike in robberies is most likely due to the approaching holiday season. "People are looking for money or merchandise for the holidays," he said. "There's always an upswing in retail theft and an upswing in robberies."