Potrero Hill Chez Maman Robbery Breaks Via Twitter

In a somewhat ironic reversal of the impetus behind the recently popular Pleaserobme.com, news of a robbery at the Chez Maman restaurant in Potrero Hill was broken earlier tonight by TechCrunch staffer Sophia Kittler and backed up by another three sources including Twitter engineer Patrick Ewing. Social media reports of the robbery shocked the local digerati especially in light of lack of real time coverage from any major S.F. news organizations.

Screencap of KTVU via Mike Doeff

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While KTVU did eventually send cameras to the scene, reports and retweets regarding the "restaurant invasion" had already spread widely through out the micro-blogging service, and by 10 p.m. it was the citizen journalism of Ewing that confirmed for many users the reason for the six squad cars outside the local French favorite. After talking with people from the Chez Maman staff, Ewing reported via Twitter that two men had robbed the [Chez Maman] register and customers at gunpoint earlier that evening .

​ While information is still sketchy, the first traditional media story hit Google news at 12:20, a good three hours after the first tweet and the SFPD Twitter account (@SFPD_online) has yet to respond to various online entreaties. While we're sure we will be hearing about this all day tomorrow, select San Franciscans heard it on Twitter first.

Be sure to check our sister blog The Snitch tomorrow a.m. for updates.


Follow us on Twitter at @alexiat and @sfweekly.