Victim has mixed feelings about arrest of Avondale robbery suspect

CHARLESTON - Edwin McCoy said he had about five seconds to look at the face of the man holding a gun to his head and demanding money the night of June 24.

"As I walked around the corner, within two to three steps I had a gun to my head," McCoy recounted. "At first I thought it might be a coworker f---ing with me, but then I realized it was a gun."

McCoy left his job at Triangle Char and Bar a few minutes after 11 p.m. that night and headed to his car about a block away, parked at the corner of Tall Oak Avenue and Hickory Street, where the Avondale Point Business District meets the Ashley Forrest neighborhood.

"I looked at his face and back at the gun," McCoy said. "He said 'Give me your f---ing money, give me your phone, give me everything you got!'"

The gunman got $60 cash, McCoy's cellphone and the apron he wears for his job at Triangle.

"He picked up my apron and started casually walking away, and as he was leaving another guy walked toward him and joined him," McCoy said. "I think the other guy was acting as his lookout, because that is a relatively busy area. There are like six or seven bars and restaurants right there, it wasn't the easiest place to rob somebody."

McCoy sat in his car for a few seconds as the gunman and the other man walked away from him, before driving back to Triangle to find a phone and call police. Officers arrived about five minutes after he reported the incident, he said.

That night, he said police stopped two men who fit the description of the gunman McCoy had given, and asked McCoy if either of the men were involved.

"But I didn't think either of them had been involved," he said.

Police called McCoy in to view a photo lineup of suspects earlier this week, and he picked the photo of Cornelius Robert Jenkins, Jr. out of the series he was shown.

"Within two to three seconds he just jumped out at me as the guy who robbed me," McCoy said. "It looked exactly like the face I saw for five seconds that night."

The more he thinks about the robbery now the more the prospect of going through a trial scares him. He's glad to be alive and unhurt, that the only things he lost were a little cash and material goods.

"It could have been a lot worse," he said. "In that situation, I don't think he wanted to shoot anyone, he just wanted money, but if I'm putting him away he's going to have a personal vendetta.

"So it scares the shit out of me more now than at the time," he said. "I try not to sit still and think about it much. I'm really glad I'll be getting a call when he gets out."

He also worries that there is a possibility that Jenkins, despite McCoy's identification of him in a photo lineup, may not be the right guy.

"If they found my phone on him that would make me feel a lot better about it," he said.

McCoy said he has changed some of his routines since the robbery. He parks closer to work, and within view of the bar at Triangle.

"I definitely don't walk to my car by myself anymore," he said.