NEWS: 2 dead in L.A. medical marijuana shop robbery attempts

LOS ANGELES - Two Los Angeles pot clinic workers were killed Thursday in separate robbery attempts just hours apart, Los Angeles police said.

An employee of the Hollywood Holistic store was found by his supervisor around 9:15 p.m. Pacific (12:15am E.T.) after an apparent robbery attempt, NBC News reported.



Police would not say how the worker was killed, only that it was a homicide. The worker was pronounced dead at the scene, just north of the Hollywood Palladium, said City News Service.

Around 4:15 p.m. (7:15 p.m. ET), an unknown number of suspects burst into the Higher Patch Holistic Care store in Echo Park and opened fire, killing one employee and wounding another, NBC News said.

NBC News quoted police saying one male victim was shot in the upper torso and a second was also hit, but police were not able to declare which victim died.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the shootings came as city officials try to regulate hundreds of marijuana stores that have popped up amid California's dispensary boom.

It was not immediately known if the two incidents were related.

Source: MSNBC