Providence police investigating armed hold-ups early Sunday

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The police are searching for armed robbers who held up convenience stores in the Hope and Olneyville neighborhoods within a half-hour Sunday morning.

At 5:40 a.m., a tall, thin man with a scarf over his beard pulled a gun on a clerk inside the Cumberland Farms store at 751 Hope St. and demanded money. She gave him a few dollars, and he fled.

Across the city on Manton Avenue, minutes after the clerk opened the Sam's Food Mart at 6 a.m., another gunman in a black and white mask tried and failed to rob the store. The clerk told police that the man demanded money and approached the register, but didn't take anything.