WATCH: Store employee escapes robbers, locks would-be thieves inside store

A cellphone store employee made a pair of burglary suspects look foolish last week when he escaped a robbery attempt, and trapped the would-be thieves inside the store.

Surveillance video posted online shows two men enter a Paterson, New Jersey Boost Mobile store on August 17 and point a gun at manager Tomy Torrez. The men force Torrez into the back room, demanding phones and for him to open the safe. Torrez can be heard telling the men the phones are in the front of the store. As the suspects go in search, Torrez flees through a door into a connecting office.

“You run I kill you,” one of the suspects yells.

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Another camera angle shows Torrez and an employee in the neighbouring building escape. Torrez then directs someone outside the cellphone shop to shut the store’s security gate, while at the same time he slams closed the security fence to the office next door.

The two trapped suspects are seen frantically trying to find another way out. One of the men even tries to hide for several minutes by climbing into the store’s ceiling.

“Get us outta here!” the two men are heard yelling to laughing onlookers as they try to force open the door.

“I can’t let you outta there!” local media reported one woman telling the suspects from outside the store.

At one point one of men is heard saying, “Yo, yo, yo, I got the keys, yo,” as he slides the master set of keys through a crack in the door to an onlooker, in hopes he will open the security gate. Instead, the onlooker gives the keys to Torrez who was standing outside the store waiting for police.

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Nearly eight minutes after Torrez escaped officers still hadn’t arrived, despite two calls to 911.

Paterson police confirmed to NBC4 that dispatchers had received two calls, but interpreted them as reports of shoplifting.

The mistake provided the would-be thieves enough time to locate a toolbox. The suspects were able to remove security bars from a back window and escape before police arrived.

Eighteen minutes after the first 911 call was made, a third plea for help finally alerted emergency dispatchers that a gun was involved, triggering police to respond to the scene immediately.

By that time the suspects had fled, leaving behind a bag containing bullets and needles.

Torrez told NBC4 that he called police “five times.”

“I said, ‘We got a robbery inside, they got a gun,'” Torrez said.

Paterson police are investigating and have begun retraining dispatchers.

Police are still looking for the two suspects who managed to get away.