Sports Team, courtesy.

Updated at 1:30 p.m., Dec. 4: Mercury-Prize-nominated British band Sports Team, known for songs like “The Drop,” was robbed and had a gun pointed at them in Vallejo on Tuesday morning. The band was slated to begin a tour in Sacramento the same day.

The robbery occurred at about 8 a.m. outside a Food Mart convenience store in the 100 block of Lincoln Road West, alongside I-80.

Sports Team had just arrived in the U.S. late the previous night to begin a stretch of U.S. shows. They spent the night in San Francisco and began driving to Sacramento early the next morning, stopping at the Starbucks for breakfast, vocalist Alex Rice said Tuesday afternoon.

The band parked their white sprinter van between the coffee shop and convenience store, when a person ran in to alert them.

“‘Hey, has anyone got a white sprinter van? Looks like it’s being robbed outside,'” Rice said. “These people are trying to smash into the door and trying to get the instruments at the back.”

Rice and drummer Al Greenwood said there were three thieves in all; two men with their faces covered outside, as well as a getaway driver stopped in a blue sedan next to them. The band filmed part of the altercation (see the video below).

All six of the band members and their tour manager ran out of the store to confront the thieves, but one of them brandished a gun and pointed it at them.

“So everyone sort of sprints back in and just tried to take cover really quick and let them have at the van, essentially, and everything in it,” Rice said.

The thieves did not shoot, and no one from the band or the touring party was injured. The thieves smashed the windows at the front of the van and were able to get away with six laptops, several cameras as well as passports and other personal property like Nintendo Switches. While they smashed the windows at the back of the van, they were not able to get inside to steal the band’s instruments or most of its gear.

The most distinct items stolen was their in-ear monitors, which are moulded to each musician’s ears.

The group called police, but Rice and Greenwood said dispatchers told them to file an online burglary report and officers did not respond to the scene.

“I think was the most shocking bit to be honest for us,” Rice said. “It was how everyone took in stride. It felt very odd that someone pulling a gun on someone else at Starbucks is not high enough on the list of priorities to warrant police turning up. … The employees at Starbucks seemed pretty nonplussed and kind of resigned to the whole thing as well. … Like it was an everyday occurrence.”

“It was probably one of the more traumatic things that we’ve ever seen,” Greenwood said. “In the U.K., that would be the whole place shut down [with] police inspectors and a manhunt out for the person who’s got a gun. It felt like the community there seemed so normalized to this being what they have to deal with day to day.”

Vallejo police Sgt. Rashad Hollis on Wednesday said that police did not immediately respond to the report of the crime because the callers—the band and its touring party—reported it as a burglary with suspects who had already left the scene.

Hollis said when a dispatcher asked the caller whether a gun was involved, the caller said he was unsure. When asked if something that appeared to be a firearm was pointed at the victims, the caller only said that it was not pointed at him specifically.

Officers would have still responded to the Starbucks to investigate had an SWAT activity and shelter-in-place order not begun in the next hour, Hollis said. The SWAT activity took up the police department’s resources until early Wednesday morning.

Hollis added that the same suspects were also reported to have burglarized several other vehicles in the area. The investigation is ongoing but Hollis did not have any new updates.

Sports Team decided to continue its tour, which will still include a show at Goldfield Trading Post in Sacramento on Tuesday night and at the Dec. 7 show at The Chapel. The touring party had to go back to San Francisco to return and replace the rented van.

“We are absolutely chuffed to have our instruments stick,” Greenwood said. “That would have been such a blow. We’re really excited to play the gigs still. … We still love the Bay Area.”

Asked whether there was anything fans could do to support the band on this tour, Greenwood and Rice said coming out to the shows is the best form of support.

“Everyone we’ve met has just been lovely. That’s the bit that kind of makes it OK,” Rice said. “Our label is looking after us really well. We’ll be fine.”

Contact editor Roman Gokhman at RomiTheWriter.bsky.social.