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Sean McQuillan had done due diligence, comparison shopping for cookware at various stores at Lougheed Town Centre before settling on the Bay.

The 33-year-old accountant bought a panini press and a crockpot/slow cooker on Thursday evening, paying by debit card and putting the receipt in his left front pocket.

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The cashier asked if he’d like a bag for the two boxes, but after piling one on top of the other and judging their weight, McQuillan thanked her and said no, that he lived just a couple of minutes’ walk from the store.

So far, so normal.

But after he left the store and was walking into the parking lot from the mall’s southwest exit, he says he was accosted by at least two men who came up behind him on the sidewalk, grabbed him and pinned him against the wall of the Safeway store.

“I struggled with them momentarily and ended up on the ground on my stomach,” McQuillan said on Friday, a bit of a goose egg above his right eye and scrapes on his forehead where he says his face was shoved into the concrete after he moved his hand close to his pocket while struggling to get free.