Suspect Caught In Hinsdale Robbed Store: Cops

HINSDALE, IL – An armed robbery suspect who was caught in Hinsdale held up a store in Addison on Thursday, ordering customers to lay on the floor, police said.

Diamonte Walls, 25, of Chicago, was arrested on felony charges of armed robbery with a firearm and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon.

About 12:30 p.m., officers responded to a panic alarm at the Verizon store at 1400 W. Lake St., according to a news release from the DuPage County State's Attorney's Office.

Wearing a black hoodie and a black mask, Walls entered the store with a gun and demanded the three employees give him merchandise and customers lie on the floor, authorities said.

He ordered the employees to the back storage room, where he gave them garbage bags and ordered them to fill them up with merchandise, police said.

Walls was followed out of the store by an accomplice, who was pretending to be a customer lying on the floor, the news release said.

The men fled in separate cars – Walls in a white Infiniti driven by an unidentified person and the accomplice in a gray Toyota.

Officers deployed a spike strip that flattened the front tire of the Infiniti. But Walls continued to drive onto southbound Interstate 294, exiting at Ogden Avenue into Hinsdale, police said.

He stopped at Elm Street and Fuller Road, about 1,000 feet from The Lane School, where he and the accomplice got out, police said. The school went into lockdown.

Officers apprehended Walls in a backyard about a block away. In the backyard, they found a black garbage bag containing 30 iPhones, two Galaxy phones, four iPads and an Apple Watch, totaling $37,000 in value, police said.

Officers also discovered a loaded Taurus G2C 9mm handgun with one bullet in the chamber in the front yard of the neighboring house, prosecutors said. The Taurus was missing its magazine, which authorities found in the Verizon parking lot, police said.

A DuPage County judge granted prosecutors' request to deny bail for Walls.

“It is alleged that Mr. Walls concealed his identity and armed himself with a handgun, and with another individual, entered the Verizon store in the middle of the afternoon and terrorized not only three employees just trying to make an honest living, but several customers in the store as well,” DuPage County State's Attorney Robert Berlin said in the news release.

Prosecutors said an investigation into identifying and finding Walls' accomplices continues. No description was given.

Anyone with information about them is asked to call Addison police at 630-543-3080.