A British band starting their West Coast tour in San Francisco this week was hit hard when a gunman robbed the band’s van at a gas station in Vallejo.
But as a full-time crew, the group said they will continue their tour.
“I just got robbed at gunpoint 10 minutes into a US tour,” the band, Team Sports, wrote in an Instagram post. “A man is running saying that there are boys smashing a van. He went out trying to stop it and found the boys in disguise robbing the van.”
The post-bunk band will release a new album in February and have tour stops in San Diego, Los Angeles and Portland later this month. The band played the first show of their tour in San Francisco on Monday and made the trip to their next gig in Sacramento. But the members first stopped at a Vallejo Starbucks gas station on Tuesday, where the tourist gods weren’t smiling down on them.
One of the masked men pulled out a gun when members of the group tried to stop the robbery, according to the group’s document, which includes a video of the episode. In the video, which was taken around 9am, a group of masked people are seen removing items from the band’s white tour van. Someone yells at the band members to seek refuge inside a Starbucks.
When the band called the police to report the robbery, they were told to “bring the report online,” according to the band’s statement. Members are from Cambridge, England.
“They lost a lot of gear, but they didn’t find any instruments in Sacramento to play tonight,” the group wrote. “They can take our Nintendo Switches but they can never take our ability to play rock songs about highways. It’s so amazing how resigned everyone seems to be. ‘It happens’. 9am at a Starbucks gas station. Wild.”
The Vallejo Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The indie band, which was nominated for a 2020 Mercury Prize, will play in Los Angeles on Dec. 11 in El Cid and Palm Springs on Dec. 15.
