On the first day of their US tour, UK indie band Sports Team was robbed at gunpoint in Vallejo, California.
The band, who has two top 10 albums in the UK, stopped for some Starbucks in the Bay Area when a masked thief decided to rob their van. They shared footage on their Instagram account on Tuesday, detailing the incident.
Videos by VICE
“Just been robbed at gun point 10 minutes into the US tour,” they wrote. “Stopped for coffee. Man runs in saying some guys are smashing into a van. Ran out to try to stop it and find masked guys ransacking the van. Start yelling and they pull out a gun.”
The band members spoke with BBC, sharing more information about the robbery. The thieves smashed the window of the van and stole electronics like film cameras and laptops, as well as passports, documents, and suitcases filled with the bands’ clothes—all in broad daylight.
“I really thought I was about to watch someone get shot because it took a while for our tour manager to realize [they had a gun],” drummer Al Greenwood told the BBC. “In the video, you can hear me screaming at her to get down.”
“Obviously, if someone pulls a gun, you run for cover,” singer Alex Rice added. “But the thing that struck me about it was the resignation. The people around us weren’t very panicked at all. It seemed like a very everyday occurrence.”
According to their post, they contacted the police who told them to “submit an online report.” The band found it “pretty shocking how resigned everyone seemed to be,” despite the robbery occurring at 9 a.m. in a Starbucks parking lot.
Despite losing “a lot of personal gear,” Sports Team still went on to play their Sacramento show that night.
“They can take our Nintendo Switches but they can never take our ability to play rock songs about motorways,” they wrote on Instagram.
