Walmart Market Armed Robbery Suspects Arrested by Tosa Police

Three Milwaukee men are in custody in the armed robbery early Friday morning of the Walmart Market in Wauwatosa, according to police reports.

Two of the men are accused of driving to the door of the store and carrying out the holdup while the other waited with a backup vehicle. After the robbery, they swapped cars and transferred their guns and other evidence from one to the other, to "throw off police," one of them confessed.

A criminal complaint charging each of them with robbery of a business while armed will be signed Wednesday, Wauwatosa police said.

The robbery was something of an inside job, according to the suspects' statements.

Two of the suspects, one 20 and one 26 years old, were discussing robbing a bank or business Thursday night. The third man, 23, told them that he could plan and take part in a robbery of the Walmart at 3850 N. 124^thSt., because he knew the place well. He had been fired from his job there a week before.

He drew a map of the interior and told them about the store's policies on storing money. He and one of the others donned all black clothing and took two guns, one a loaded pistol and the other a short rifle.

Employees herded around at gunpoint

Surveillance video shows the car pulling into the lot and twice switching parking spaces before pulling up to the front door at 2:46 a.m. The two robbers, now also wearing black full-face masks, entered the store with guns drawn.

An 18-year-old stock clerk near the front of the store was on his second night on the job when he saw the men walk right past him. He said he was incredulous that they didn't seem to see him. He quickly began to round up other employees and herded them to the break room, then called police.

Meanwhile, the two robbers encountered three other clerks in the aisles of the store, demanding they find the manager. Marching all three at gunpoint, they soon found the manager, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her back to the front of the store.

She took them toward a self-checkout counter, but one of the suspects said, “No, we’re gonna go to the cash office.”

Still holding all four employees, they headed for the customer service counter. One suspect told the manager, “You’re not going fast enough. Hurry up, I’m gonna shoot you.”

Behind customer service, one man held the three clerks outside while the other ordered the manager to open the cash office, but first to “Make sure you turn off the alarm.” She did, and he demanded she open the safe.

As much as he knew, the former employee apparently did not know there was a silent alarm on the safe as well, alerting police at about the same time 911 calls began to come in from the young clerk and others in the break room and huddled in the stock room in back.

The manager said that the second man entered the office and together the two filled an empty printer paper box with bags of cash, being careful to take only the ones from the register drawers — likely fearing that bills in the others might be marked.

They ran out of the store, jumped back in the white 1997 Buick sedan they had left at the door, and drove off.

Officer so close, but duty to citizens calls

The first Wauwatosa officer to arrive noted in his report that he saw a white sedan leaving the parking lot, but dispatchers were still saying the armed robbers were still inside the store, along with many employees. He elected to respond to what was thought to be the emergency.

He and other officers evacuated the employees and searched the store, soon realizing the suspects had fled. The store staff was questioned, all saying that they could give no descriptions of either suspect as they were covered head to toe.

Several said that they believed the rifle one carried was in fact a BB gun, and the 18-year-old felt certain of it, saying he was close enough he could see BB's in the magazine of what he told police was an AK-47 lookalike.

Milwaukee police don't realize who they have

Police would later learn that the two robbers drove a short distance to where their accomplice was waiting in a green Chevy Tahoe. The switched vehicles and loaded much of the cash, the guns and some of their clothing into the Tahoe.

Minutes later, the accomplice now driving the white Buick was pulled over by Milwaukee police and arrested on outstanding warrants. But the MPD officers did not connect the car to the robbery or report it to Wauwatosa.

The suspect, though, would be easy to find once the crime started to unravel – which it did with surprising speed.

By mid-day, Tosa police were contacted by FBI agents who said they had a confidential informant who had implicated the suspects in the robbery and knew where at least one was likely to be found.

Undercover officers located the Buick parked in front of a house in the 8000 block of West Sheridan Avenue and staked in out. At 4:45 p.m. Friday, their prime suspect arrived in a Pontiac Firebird with another man, met two more men outside and then entered the house. Soon he came back out, carrying a box of speakers.

Officers, on an order, simultaneously got out of their cars with guns drawn and ordered the suspect to the ground.

For reasons not quite clear, another man who would not be implicated in the robbery in any was, ran from the scene and was taken down by K9 Officer Addy. He was sent to the hospital for treatment of deep bite wounds to his arm.

Police impounded the Buick and found a large amount of cash actually sticking out of the center console and stuffed in wads next to it.

A mother would know

By Saturday, officers visited the last known address of another suspect, whose sister met officers and told them that her brother had been fired from the Walmart. His mother arrived while officers were reviewing surveillance video with her daughter. She glanced at it and said, “I know that’s my boy, that’s him.”

Despite his disguise, she said, his shoes, his stance, his posture, his walk all told on him. She said her son looks just like her and "a mother would know her son."

That suspect and another man were arrested in front of the County Jail after it was learned that they were going to pick up the personal belongings of a man being held there – who happened to have been arrested driving a certain white Buick early Friday morning.

The ex-Walmart employee was arrested, while the other was released when it developed that the man they wanted was in a jail cell already. 

Tosa police asked jailers to inform them if the anyone bailed him out, and at 10 p.m., they were waiting for him.

Police got a full confession from the first suspect arrested. The guns have not yet been found, and only part of the cash stolen in the robbery has been recovered.

Just before his arrest Friday afternoon, that first suspect had paid $1,375 cash for the Pontiac Firebird he was driving.