An unemployed Reno craps dealer was arrested Friday after barricading himself inside a downtown comic book store and threatening to set off a homemade bomb over a dispute involving stolen comic books, police said.
Robert Allen Bailey, 47, was arrested without incident after a 90-minute standoff at Alex D’s Comics, 638 West Fifth St.

Police negotiators convinced Bailey to surrender without lighting an explosive device made out of small propane canisters, lamp oil and about 4,000 firecrackers, said Reno police Sgt. Doug McPartland.

“He said he wanted to blow up the place or burn it down,” McPartland said. “If he couldn’t have his comic books, nobody could.”

The incident’s origin dates back to 2000, when Bailey’s storage shed in Reno was burglarized and cases of collectible comics he claimed were worth $100,000 were stolen, McPartland said.
An arrest in that case was eventually made, and a small number of comic books recovered, McPartland said.

But Bailey was convinced the owners of Alex D’s Comics had obtained many of his comics, a suspicion leading to his actions Friday, police said.

“The way he put it was: This was his life,” McPartland said. “It’s been brewing with this guy for a long time, and apparently he decided to make things right.”

There is no proof any of the comic books in the store ever belonged to Bailey, police said.

According to police, Bailey entered the comic book store shortly before noon with the explosive device, a pair of handcuffs and a Taser stun gun. He is accused of ordering a female employee to put on the handcuffs and after she refused, a struggle ensued.

The woman escaped him and fled to a nearby business, notifying police. Hostage negotiators reached the suspect by telephone shortly later, ultimately convincing him to surrender.

Members of the police bomb squad took custody of the explosive device, which McPartland described as dangerous.

“It probably would have exploded if he lit it,” McPartland said. “At least it would have caught fire.”

Bailey was arrested on suspicion of attempted kidnapping, battery with intent to commit robbery, burglary and possession of an explosive device.

Bystanders watched as gun-wielding police surrounded the store and negotiated with Bailey.

“Comic books? It’s pretty strange,” said Diane Green of Reno. “I was wondering what the story was. What’s going on with people?”

Lucas Patrick of Seymour walked into police headquarters Wednesday and announced he was Jesus Christ, police said.

He then led officers to 16 bags of crack cocaine in his vehicle and told them they’d earn “salvation” by arresting him on drug charges.

Bless their souls, that’s just what they did.

Patrick, 24, of Balance Rock, was charged with possession of narcotics and possession of narcotics within 1,500 feet of a school zone.

“By arresting him, he said we passed the test and had been saved,” said Detective Sgt. Michael Madden, police spokesman.

Patrick had been arrested just last month in a Valley-wide drug sweep.

He took it on himself to visit Shelton police Wednesday to talk with officers about a Shelton crime case, police said.

Then they all went to his vehicle, where the cocaine was stashed, police said.

“We stated that he had to get arrested for this and he said, It is God’s will,’ ” Madden said.

Patrick later acknowledged using hallucinogenic drugs and smoking marijuana laced with embalming fluid, known on the street as “wet,” police said.

But he said God was the reason he didn’t want to sell crack anymore, Madden said.

“He shook our hands and told us we have been made whole, 100 percent,” he said.

Detective Ben Trabka said it’s common for suspects to say they’ve changed their lives. But he said it’s rare to hear them claim they’re Jesus.

Madden said Patrick cooperated throughout the arrest.

Patrick, dressed in a greenish sweater with casino dice on it, had a peaceful air during his arraignment at Derby Superior Court Thursday afternoon.

Assistant State’s Attorney John Kerwin recommended that his bond be raised from $10,000 to $15,000 due to his Feb. 5 arrest for possession of cocaine with intent to sell and possession of cocaine within 1,500 feet of a school zone.

But Public Defender David Nanavaty pointed to Patrick’s courtesy toward police.

Judge Joseph Sylvester let stand the original bond and ordered that Patrick receive medical and psychiatric treatment.

“Apparently he has found Jesus, and does not need drugs anymore,” Sylvester said.

Patrick’s case was continued until April 8.

By RAQUEL EXNER, EDMONTON SUN

A man robbed a city restaurant and held three people at gunpoint while he ate pizza Sunday - after being told it would take 30 minutes for an extra-large vegetarian pizza to arrive at his doorstep, say police.

“We see some bizarre things happen, but this one tops the list,” said Edmonton police spokesman Dean Parthenis.

“It certainly had our investigators baffled.”

After getting angry about the wait, the customer and an employee started swearing at each other on the phone, and then the conversation abruptly ended, say police.

About 20 minutes later, at 2:50 a.m., a man armed with a handgun walked into the Homemade Steak and Pizza restaurant at 8514 118 Ave. and ordered staff to make a vegetarian pizza, after finding out the employee he talked to wasn’t there, say police.

When the food was ready, police say, the armed man - who was joined at some point by two acquaintances - chowed down.

The three helped themselves to some booze, too, according to the owner, while the armed man trained the gun on two employees and a customer for nearly an hour.

One of the suspects also grabbed about $400 in cash from an employee.

At one point the two employees and the customer were struck on the head with a gun, say police, but no shots were fired.

A delivery driver returned to the restaurant and managed to escape from a suspect, who allegedly tried to grab him.

The employee flagged down a nearby cabby who called police for help.

The owner of the pizza place, who didn’t want his name used because he’s afraid of the suspects, said the alleged robbery was “very unusual.

“But there’s nothing you can really do (to prevent something like this). The employees are pretty shaken up and can’t come to work right now.”

The owner wasn’t there during the alleged holdup, but he said his employees told him the bandits threatened to come back and kill them all if they spoke to police.

An Edmonton man and two teens from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have each been charged with robbery, uttering threats, unlawful confinement and various weapons offences.

A would-be burglar almost gave new meaning to the Bob Sykes Barbecue slogan of “slow cooked in fine Southern tradition” before Bessemer firefighters extracted him Tuesday from one of the restaurant’s vents.

Sykes cook Alonzo Scott said he had just gotten to work around 4:30 Tuesday morning when a muffled male voice startled him.

Scott said he thought it was a co-worker who had just arrived, yelling from outside to be let in.

“I heard the voice again and looked,” he said.

Scott said he saw a pair of blue and white Reeboks dangling from above the hamburger grill. “I’m thinking, Who the … is this?” said Scott.

Scott said he asked the voice if he was OK.

“`I’m hot. I’m about to faint,’” Scott said the voice from the vent told him. “Please, man, help me out of here.’”

Scott said he went to the roof and saw the top of the man stuck in the 10-foot-tall, one-foot-wide vent with his hands above his head. The man had climbed onto the roof on maintenance ladders attached to the back of the building.

Back inside the restaurant, Scott said, he and a co-worker unsuccessfully tried to extract the man, then called 911.

Scott said the man was most agreeable with calling the authorities.

“Go ahead and call them,” Scott said the voice told him.

Scott said firefighters soon arrived and tried to cut the man out, but could not. They then got on the roof themselves and dropped a rope down the vent.

It took three firefighters to pull him out.

He had been there at least three hours, firefighters said.

“They snatched him so hard, his pants came off,” Scott said. “He was ready to get out of there; he looked like the Swamp Thing.”

The suspect was carted off to jail, but Sykes employees still had his pants and the pink bicycle he rode to the restaurant.

Bessemer police charged Sampson Dearman, 25, with third-degree burglary. The 5-foot-7, 190-pound Dearman was put in the Jefferson County Jail in Bessemer on $10,000 bail bond.

“He was a greasy mess,” Police Chief Ron Brown said. “It was good that he was stuck where someone could see him before they started cooking.”

Van Sykes, who owns the popular Bessemer restaurant, said purloining pork had to have been the burglar’s motive. “There is no money here,” Sykes said. “I don’t know why someone would break in other than to take some barbecue.”

Scott said Dearman had applied for a job at Sykes about six months ago and recently returned to inquire about the job.

“I told him to come back in two weeks,” Scott said, “and I guess he came back in two weeks.”

By Bill Fortier

Telegram & Gazette Staff

Two Worcester men who allegedly held up another man were quickly arrested after police got their addresses from job applications they had filled out just before the robbery.

Michael Robinson, 21, of 38 Great Brook Valley Ave., and Daniel Coran, 18, of 48 Bullard Ave. were arrested by Auburn police on Bullard Avenue.
Each was charged with armed robbery, larceny from a person, assault and battery, assault with a dangerous weapon (knife) and conspiracy, according to police. Mr. Robinson was also charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

The police were called about 2 p.m. Wednesday to Imperial Distributors at 33 Sword St., in the Auburn Industrial Park, after a report that a man was being chased by someone with a knife.

Joseph Cook, 18, of Worcester told the officers he had been filling out an application for work at Imperial when he heard two other job applicants discussing a plan to rob him of his necklace and jacket.

He told officers he had been involved in a dispute previously with one of the two men, according to police Sgt. Todd Lemon.

Mr. Cook said the two assaulted him when he left the business, with one man holding him from behind, while the other displayed a knife about 8 inches long. The men allegedly beat up Mr. Cook, took his jacket and fled. Sgt. Lemon estimated the jacket’s worth at $200; it was recovered.

When he overheard their plans to rob him, Mr. Cook said he had hid his necklace in his shoe. He called police from a nearby office after the robbery.

Police used information provided by Mr. Cook about the vehicle the two men fled in, as well as personal information they had put on their job applications, filled out before the alleged assault.

After Auburn police notified other local and state police, Worcester police stopped a vehicle that matched the description, a Mitsubishi sedan, on Bullard Avenue.

Auburn Detectives Vincent Ross and Paul Lombardi went there to make the arrest.

Mr. Robinson and Mr. Coran were held overnight at the Auburn police station on $1,000 bail and arraigned yesterday in Central District Court, Worcester.

They are to appear in court for pretrial hearings on April 5. Judge Martha Brennan also ordered the two men to stay away from Mr. Cook. Mr. Robinson was released on bail, while Mr. Coran is being held in the Worcester County Jail in West Boylston on $1,000 cash bail.

Two Fairbanks men were arrested while allegedly trying to wrestle a roughly 500-pound safe out the door of the Moose Lodge Monday morning.
“I’d like to know what they were going to do with the safe,” said Mike Riley, lodge manager.

One thing is certain, the suspects, Roger D. Yost and William Isberg, both 40, weren’t going to cart it away with the bicycles they rode to the lodge.

Fairbanks police and Alaska State Troopers could hear the two struggling with the safe inside and were ready when the two kicked open a side door, said police Sgt. Jim Geier.

Isberg was immediately arrested, but Yost turned and fled through the lodge, Geier said.

What stopped him was a locked front door.

Riley pointed to the bent push bar that budged an inch but didn’t give when Yost hit it running. “The cop said, ‘Too bad we didn’t have a camera,’ he’d like to see the look on (Yost’s) face when he hit it,” Riley said Monday afternoon while workers were replacing a broken window presumably damaged by the alleged thieves.

Yost and Isberg are also blamed for breaking into Parfait Dix, a spa on South Cushman Street, at about 1:15 a.m., approximately half an hour before police were called to the lodge.

“They did not get inside. There was an auto alarm that apparently frightened them away,” said Geier, who reported the two had been drinking prior to the burglary attempt.

According to a criminal complaint, police found matching shoe prints and bicycle tire treads at Parfait Dix. Police found the bicycles leaning against the outside of the lodge.

Riley said the two broke through a triple-paned window just over an hour after a bartender locked up the lodge following a lucrative Super Bowl party. The window cost almost $800 to replace.

The pair only managed to move the roughly 500-pound safe a few feet to the side door, Riley said. This was after Isberg and Yost broke open two empty cash registers, Geier said.

When police arrested Isberg, he had a large bolt cutter in his hand and a bottle of liquor and a pry tool in his pocket, the complaint says. Yost was found with a large knife and several unopened packs of Marlboro cigarettes in his pocket.

The complaint said Yost admitted they had tried to burglarize Parfait Dix and had entered the lodge, but said it was all Isberg’s idea.

Both were charged with second-degree burglary, second- and third-degree criminal mischief, second-degree attempted theft, fourth-degree theft and second-degree attempted burglary.

The complaint says Isberg is currently on probation for a felony theft conviction and has six prior felony convictions, while Yost has one prior felony conviction and 15 misdemeanor convictions.

Each is being held at Fairbanks Correctional Center on $20,000 bail.

I am a Deputy with the Kent County Sheriff’s Department in Kent County Grand Rapids Michigan. On Saturday February 23, 2002 we had a 16 year old kid that decided to enter an attached garage to a ranch home in a residential neighborhood to steel bottles of beer from a refrigerator. There were several problems with his plan.

First of all, he decided to do it at 5:10 pm in broad daylight. He parked a bicycle in the street two houses away. Of course, all the neighbors were home since it was a weekend day, including the victims. He took a backpack, climbed a fence, and entered through the back door of the garage, which was closed but not locked. The home owner heard a noise in the garage and decided to investigate since he has had beer stolen from his refrigerator before. He found the kid standing there with a back pack full of long neck bottles of beer. The kid ran out the back door. The homeowner ran out the front door and spotted the kid running around the house to the front yard. He chased him down. The kid made it to his bike with the heavy load but the home owner caught him and tackled him in the street. Both of them ended up with road rash. The kid struggled, kicking and punching the homeowner and then spraying him with mace from his pocket. The homeowner held him down on the pavement until his wife and other neighbors called the police

When we arrived, he was taken into custody. His jacket was laying on the ground next to the bike along with some broken bottles of beer. In one of the pockets was a mini cassette recorder. The kid recorded a narrated account as to what he was doing that day, from where he was riding his bike down the road, where he parked it, how he went around the back side of the house, jumped over a fence, and “going in to rob the old man,” in his own voice.