Two men were arrested and another was injured after the suspects allegedly cut the line at a Pokémon card sale in California, sparking an all-out brawl that ended in a brutal stabbing.
Pokémon fans and scalpers lined up bright and early outside a GameStop in the town of Colma on Saturday for a highly anticipated restock of the franchise’s coveted trading cards.
All it took was one wrong step, and suddenly three men were fighting on the sidewalk.
One of the suspects, 49-year-old San Francisco resident Miguel OrellanasFlores, tried to cut the line to buy the Pokémon cards, the Colma Police Department said.
The unidentified victim, who was wearing a black hoodie with the franchise’s famed unofficial mascot Pikachu on the front, confronted him, as captured in a video obtained by KRON.
“I apologized and everything,” OrellanasFlores said while another man tried to push the victim away.
“Nah, get your hands off me,” the victim said.
The victim lunged to try and reach OrellanasFlores before pivoting and smacking 27-year-old Isaiah Calles across the face.
OrellanasFlores and Calles pounced on the victim and allegedly shoved him to the ground while frantic bystanders tried to intervene.
“There’s kids watching!” one woman shouted as she set her belongings down and tried to pull them apart.
All three men scrambled back to their feet, throwing blind punches until they collapsed in a pile on the ground. Somewhere in the mix, OrellanasFlores grabbed a mason jar and smashed it on the back of the victim’s head, according to the CPD.
Calles, meanwhile, reached for one of the shards and allegedly stabbed the victim multiple times.
The two men fled the scene in separate vehicles, but the victim was somehow still aware enough to obtain photos of their cars — with the license plates included, police said.
OrellanasFlores and Calles were both arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon, assault with a deadly weapon causing great bodily injury, battery with serious bodily injury and conspiracy to commit a crime, according to the CPD.
Pokémon cards tend to sell for an hefty prices online, both because of the price gouging spurred by scalping and the high value of some “special illustration rare” and “hyper rare” cards.
Matters in the trading card world have only been complicated by the worth placed on professional sports authenticator, or PSA, cards.
Cards rated a PSA 10 can be worth thousands of dollars, depending on the subject and rarity. Still, clinching a perfect card is rare and comes down to aspects outside of the collector’s control, including how the card is printed and the logo’s centering.
The child-friendly gambling ploy drives some people to desperate measures.
In late May, two hammer-wielding crooks nabbed thousands of dollars worth of the collectible cards in Detroit. The cards, locked in a display case, were rare ones that have been out of print for years.
In January, a restock at a Los Angeles Costco turned violent as shoppers fought just to grab the cards off the shelves, still having to trek through the chaos to the cash register before they were home free.
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