Surveillance video shows recycling plant executive's robbery

RALEIGH, NC -- New surveillance video shows a recycling business owner getting his mettle put to the test as two men wearing his company's uniforms beat and robbed him at gunpoint.

"For better or for worse I was in Manhattan for 9/11. I was just a few miles away. I was in China during Tiananmen square and had to be evacuated, so I've seen a few things, but nothing as bad as this," said Greg Brown, the owner and CEO of Raleigh Metal Recycling, told ABC11.

Brown says he was opening for business last Friday at about 5 a.m. when the two masked men strong-arm their way into the entrance of the facility on Garner Road in south Raleigh.

The video shows the men pointing a semiautomatic pistol at Brown's head, while they force him to disarm the security system.

"When they charged the front door, they knew that I had to shut that alarm off. Also notice they're wearing my company uniforms. This was an inside job of some type," Brown said.

The men then push Brown into a back office where the company safe is located. There they kicked, punched, and threw him to the floor.

Insisting he open the safe, Brown says he was certain the men were going to kill him, but for some reason they didn't. He wouldn't explain further citing the ongoing investigation.

"I just thought I was dead. I just thought in the corner pool of blood... gun to my head, gun to my side," Brown explained. "They just hit me and kicked me. I'm covering my eyes because he kept screaming don't look at me."

The two bandits eventually resorted to stealing Brown's wallet and cellphone before they briskly walked away from the scene.

The video showed the crooks wearing light-colored jackets with horizontal yellow stripes on the front and back and vertical yellow stripes on the sleeves. Both are also wearing long, braided hair or a wig with long braids. One is wearing distinctive Red Air Bakin Nike shoes.

Brown is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the robbers and a third person, who drove a vehicle that dropped them off at his business that morning.

The experience has slightly changed the way the business owner stores his money.

"I thought I had a key, but I didn't have a key and frankly, effective now we have a sign up that my people can no longer have access to this," said Brown. "It's going to be an armored car service."

Anyone with information about the robbery is asked to call Raleigh Crime Stoppers at (919) 834-4357.