Police are looking for a man suspected of robbing a St. Paul restaurant and gas station at gunpoint earlier this month.

Surveillance video, released by police Friday in an attempt to identify the suspect, showed him go to the counter at Lucky’s Gulf station at 306 E. Larpenteur Ave. at about 12:50 a.m. March 4 to buy a Pepsi. He handed money to the cashier, started sipping the soda, pulled out a gun and pointed it at the cashier.

The cashier jumped back and put up his hands as the man demanded money from the cash register and threatened him, said Steve Linders, a St. Paul police spokesman.

The clerk gave the man cash, which the robber stuffed in his pocket. Then the robber told the clerk he wanted the coins from the cash register. The clerk dumped them out and, at the man’s request, put them in a bag for him.

Police suspect that a woman, who is seen on surveillance video at the ATM before the robbery, drove the man to the station in a sport-utility vehicle, Linders said. The man walked away after the robbery and police said she may have picked him up down the street.

The man is also suspected of robbing the Subway restaurant at 376 White Bear Ave., roughly five-and-a-half miles away, about 20 minutes earlier, Linders said.

In that case, a man walked into the store, took a bag of potato chips and went to the counter. He pulled a gun, which witnesses described as a black semi-automatic, and pointed it at an employee. The man told the worker to give him all the money in the cash register, but the employee shut the cash drawer and ran to the back of the building, Linders said.

The man then pointed his gun at three customers and robbed them. He stole the wallets of a 37-year-old man who was at Subway with his children, and a 16- and 18-year-old who had just entered the business, according to Linders. He ordered the victims to lie on the ground before running out.

The suspect is described as a black man standing 5 feet 6 inches and weighing about 150 pounds, with a scruffy beard. He was wearing a Zoo York hooded sweatshirt, black baseball cap and gray shoes. Police ask anyone with information about the identities of him or the woman at the gas station to call the robbery unit at 651-266-5650.