Bay Area Run Club founder robbed of camera gear at gunpoint in Oakland park
Bay Area Run Club founder robbed of camera gear at gunpoint in Oakland park
The founder of a local running club is still shaken after being robbed at gunpoint in Oakland. It happened at Joaquin Miller Park very early Friday morning. Jacob Zlobinsky was promoting his latest event when he had thousands of dollars in camera equipment taken.
OAKLAND, Calif. - The founder of a local running club is still shaken after being robbed at gunpoint in Oakland at Joaquin Miller Park Friday morning.
Jacob Zlobinsky was promoting his latest event when he had thousands of dollars in camera equipment taken.
The Bay Area Run Club hosts fun events all over, often with hundreds in attendance. But it was while organizers were promoting their Halloween 5k run that things got downright scary.
"All I could think of is don't do anything that's going to get you shot," says Jacob Zlobinsky, founder of the Bay Area Run Club.
Zlobinsky brought his younger brother and lots of expensive camera equipment. The idea was to make a spooky, nighttime, promotional video.
"Basically, we're shooting the ad and two guys come up behind me probably an hour into us shooting and pull a gun out and rob me at gunpoint. Take all my camera equipment, all my media gear and my like setups," he said.
It was professional grade gear he'd saved up for. There were multiple cameras, a drone, and lighting equipment. Zlobinsky used it to do marketing for local businesses.
"I've already tallied up $26,000. And that's without microphones, the monitor and a whole bunch of other stuff," he said.
He filed a report with Oakland police but isn't hopeful.
"They're going to do their best, but the guys were unidentifiable. They had ski masks. They were covered up... pretty simple clothes," he said.
The park in Oakland isn't even the site of the next run. It was just a convenient halfway spot for Zlobinsky and his brother to meet.
He said his focus now is on putting this behind him and making sure the Halloween 5k goes off without a hitch.
"It could have been so much worse. We're alive. We're healthy. We're a little traumatized but at the end of day we've got to move on," he said.
The Halloween 5k run is actually this Saturday at Pier 70 in San Francisco and will have live music and food vendors. Zlobinsky has set up a GoFundMe in the hopes he can recoup some of what was stolen.