Police Seek Man Who Threatened Explosion

Police were investigating a report that a man with an aerosol can strapped to his chest threatened to blow up a Hatboro gas station if a clerk did not give him $100.

Hatboro police said that at about 11 p.m. Saturday a man with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled tightly around his face walked up to the glass cashier's booth of Sachetta's Exxon station at County Line and York Roads and requested a book of matches.

The request did not seem odd, because the station sells cigarettes, so the clerk passed matches to the man.

With matches in hand, the man asked the clerk how much she valued the gas pumps and pulled up his sweatshirt to expose a metallic, cylindrical object that the clerk said she believed was an explosive device.

The man warned that he would not detonate the device if she gave him $100. The clerk passed $161 through the cash drawer to the man. He ran south on York Road, the clerk said.

He was described as a white male, slim, about 23 or 24 years old, about 5- feet, 7-inches with blond or light brown hair and a slight beard or mustache. He was wearing a dark sweatshirt with front pockets.