Two men robbed the Maggie Moo’s ice cream parlor on U Street at gunpoint yesterday — and they did it at 12:15 p.m., right in the middle of the day. DCist’s Lynne Venart snapped the photo above of some of the aftermath of the crime scene.

According to WJLA, the armed suspects wore masks and physically attacked a 23-year-old employee of the store when she had trouble opening the safe. The gunmen only made off with $300 in cash, and left behind the masks they wore, which police hope will help lead to their arrests.

It’s clear the store was targeted because there is only one employee working there at that time of day, but it’s startling that something like this happened in the middle of the day on a busy commercial corridor like U Street. The neighborhood may have more commonly been the scene of crimes like these a decade ago, but so much has changed on that stretch of U Street since then — the appearance of chain stores like Maggie Moo’s at the retail level of a giant condo development like the Ellington as a prime example.