HICKORY, N.C. -- A store clerk is bound, gagged and robbed. Now, officers hope surveillance video will help them put two dangerous suspects behind bars.

As the two suspects enter the front door of the Cubbard Express store on NC 127 just west of Newton, four security cameras are watching.

"It appeared they knew exactly where to go. They came in quick," said Chief Deputy Coy Reid with the Catawba County Sheriff's Department.

The video shows one of the suspects running at the lone female clerk, forcing her at knifepoint into a back room, away from the cameras.

"They put tape across her mouth and taped up her hands and her feet," Reid said.

Meanwhile, the other masked robber steals cash in the register, cartons of cigarettes and the clerk's personal cell phone and car keys.

The robbers apparently fled in the clerk's car, a 1999 maroon Toyota Camry with North Carolina license plate RYD-7835.

Across the street from the convenience store, Crossroads Pharmacy owner Bill Long said he knows what the clerk is going through.

"I have been robbed at gunpoint," Long said. "It's not a very good feeling and it leaves you traumatized for quite some time. I just feel like we're going to see more of it because we have so many unemployed people."

Reid says after this successful robbery the suspects will likely become bolder and strike again.

"They tend to progress, so hopefully we'll catch these guys early," Reid said.

The store's manager told NewsChannel 36 that the clerk plans to return to work.

Anyone with information in this case should call the Catawba County Sheriff's Department at 828-464-5241.