October 25, 2004
Americus- Seconds after a masked man walks in the Flash Foods on Highway 49, he begins beating the 64-year-old cashier.
He's unarmed, but the weapons are his fist and his feet.
"Without stating this was a robbery or open the cash register, he automatically went to beating on the clerk that was on the floor, brought her down to the ground and continued to kick her," said Richard McCorkle, an investigator with Americus Police Department.
There are three men involved in this robbery. You can see them all on the store's surveillance video. The easiest to make out is wears dreadlocks and a goatee. But you don't see him again.
"It appears he went to the outside and was probably acting as a lookout on the outside of the store," McCorkle said.
Inside, it is the other cashier who offers to open the register drawer and give them money to stop the beating, all this, while the unmasked robber seems to discourage the other. But the masked man takes the money and makes the second cashier lie on the floor.
"Are you going to shoot me?" she says to him as she kneels on the ground.
But there's a not gun. Only more hitting and kicking.
Hours after the robbery, the Flash Foods is closed, the shocked employees inside refusing to talk.
Back at Americus Police Department, officers gather to watch the video closely, trying to recognize any of the three men.
"We've had several veteran officers look at it and we don't know them," McCorkle said.
But they'll show these scenes to every law enforcement officer in the state if they have to to put these men behind bars.
Both women, 64-year-old Emma Wainwright and 52-year-old Mary Ann Tissue, were released from Sumter Regional Hospital. Right now, police believe the men left the scene in a blue Volvo. There will be a reward for information that leads to the capture of the robbers.
posted at 10:58 p.m. by brannon.stewart@walb.com
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