NHI Readers Help Solve Another Robbery

Independent readers recognized a man they saw in a video — and called the cops.

The readers were watching a video of a hold-up at a Shell station convenience store on Willow Street. The polite, bearded 57-year-old man shown carrying out the heist (he first held open a door for customers to leave) didn’t bother wearing a mask or otherwise concealing his identity. His face was in full view of a surveillance camera. The man’s relatives saw the video in the Independent and convinced him to turn himself in to police, to whom he confessed.

A day later detectives received a call from a victim of a street robbery that occurred on George and Howe streets a week after that Shell heist. A man had stopped two people on the street and implied” he had a gun, then robbed them, according to Sgt. Robert Lawlor Jr., head of the police department’s robbery and burglary unit.

I just saw the video in the Independent. That’s the guy who robbed us,” the caller told detectives, according to Lawlor. Both victims identified the 57-year-old man in the video as their assailant. Police have subsequently charged the man with that hold-up as well, according to Lawlor. Lawlor said the man told police he has struggled with a cocaine addiction for some 20 years.

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