In a sharp turn of events, a man posing as a customer interested in local foods and wine suddenly accosted the owner of a Biddeford cheese shop on Sunday, pulling out a gun and demanding cash from the register.

Russell Pease, 51, of Old Orchard Beach, has been arrested in connection with the stickup and charged with robbery, unlawful possession of a firearm and possession of a Class C drug, Biddeford police said in a statement Monday.

Ian Kern, who owns Nibblesford Cheese Shop with his brother Travis, said he was alone in the store on Washington Street when a man entered just before 3 p.m. The man, who was wearing a surgical mask, told Kern he was worried about COVID. No problem, Kern told him, and the two chatted amiably about farmers markets and local cheesemakers. When the customer said he was looking for a bottle of wine to bring to his sister, they strolled over to the store’s wine section, where Kern helped the man select a bottle. The customer only had cash, which was, again, no problem, Kern assured him.

But the seemingly ordinary customer interaction changed in an instant when Kern opened the cash register to make change.

“He came around the desk, he had the gun in his hand, and he started jabbing it into my chest and telling me he was ‘(expletive) serious,’ he wanted ‘the (expletive) money,’ ” Kern said in a telephone interview on Monday.

“It was a 180. He was perfectly normal, and then the second I opened that cash drawer, he just got really angry, threatening me and cursing me,” Kern said. “That’s why I was more shocked than scared. For a split second I thought it was a joke, then I realized it wasn’t. OK, well it’s certainly not worth dying for, so I’m not going to fight you for this.

“But he was right on top of me. There was nothing I could do. It’s not like I could have grabbed a cheese knife,” Kern said, chuckling at the idea of combating a gun with a cheese knife.

The robber emptied the cash register, Kern said, which held between $500 and $600, “a lot of money for us. At the same time, it’s just money. I wasn’t hurt. Nobody else got hurt. In the end, it’s not the end of the world.”

The robber also got $30 to $40 in the tip jar, Kern said.

Kern said the gunman forced him into a back room, and while Kern was trying to figure out what to do, he heard the front door open less than a minute later. Worried that it was a customer entering the store who might startle the gunman and escalate the situation, Kern said, “I opened the door and ran out just in case.” Instead, he discovered the gunman leaving.

‘NOT A CRIMINAL MASTERMIND’

Kern called the police, who arrived within a minute, he said. He told them the robber had mentioned he’d been to the neighboring store, Suger, which has security cameras. Also, Kern had noted that the robber was wearing a large, distinctive earring. “Obviously not a criminal mastermind,” Kern said.

Kern has been a victim of crime before, while living in New York, where his apartment was robbed when he wasn’t home, and he was once mugged and beaten up. Plus, family members and friends of his have been mugged or had their stores broken into, so while it doesn’t make this incident “less scary or awful,” he said, he isn’t in shock.

“But I’ve never had anyone threaten me, certainly not with a gun,” he said. “That’s the thing that bothers me the most. I guess if he came in with a bat or a knife, but a gun? Really? A gun in a cheese shop?”

On Sunday, after the police took a statement from him and collected fingerprints, Kern left the shop for a bit, but he returned before day’s end to clean up. He’d been in the middle of making sauce for the store’s macaroni and cheese, and he didn’t want to leave a sink full of dishes to face when he opens again, for regular hours, on Wednesday.

Kern said it was only when he got home and called his mom, normally a tough, no-nonsense woman, and she cried, that the gravity of being robbed at gunpoint sunk in. “It freaked me out a little,” he said.

Pease is being held at the York County Jail on $25,000 bail, police said. The police said they were releasing no additional information for now.

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