A male diver wearing a hooded wetsuit and goggles climbed onto a floating restaurant called Paddlefish at Disney Springs in Florida after hours on 15 September – and made off with thousands of dollars in a rapid, unusual robbery that left staff shaken but uninjured.
Investigators say that the suspect appeared to have approached the steamboat-styled seafood restaurant under water shortly after midnight from the adjacent Lake Buena Vista.
They believe that he stashed scuba equipment nearby before climbing aboard, presumably exchanging his mask for goggles and later re-donning the gear to escape through the water.
The intruder forced two employees into a manager’s office while they were counting the day’s takings, ordered them to the ground and tied them up before departing with cash estimated at between US $10,000 and $20,000.
No injuries were reported, though one employee later told deputies she that she had feared for her life.
Deputies from Orange County Sheriff’s Office responded at about 12.10 after the man had left and staff raised the alarm.
They later released images of the suspect taken just before he had sprayed a surveillance camera with black paint, though these would seem unlikely to help with identification. An investigation is continuing.
Disney Springs is a complex at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, near Orlando. The replica steamboat, which was built in 1977 as the Empress Lilly and became Paddlefish in 2017, reopened to diners later that day.
What PADI specialty is this?