STRATEGIC PARTNERS
October 2, 2002
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Police in North Carolina's Research Triangle area are looking for a robber who attacks office workers, duct-tapes them to furniture and forces them at gunpoint to divulge their ATM passwords, according to an Associated Press report.
He has struck at least three times in Cary, Raleigh and Chapel Hill, and police in other towns in the region are looking at similar robberies to see whether they are connected.
Police in Cary, Raleigh and Chapel Hill have obtained warrants charging Virgil Larome Harris, 36, of Durham with several counts of robbery with a dangerous weapon and kidnapping. Harris, who has been arrested for nine violent felonies in North Carolina in the past five years, is still at large, according to the AP report.
Durham police charged him with obtaining property by false pretenses because the stolen ATM cards were used in Durham.
In each case, police say, the robber entered office buildings in the early evening on the pretense of asking for directions, only to pull out a semiautomatic handgun and demand valuables.The three robberies that police know of occurred in August, but it took time for investigators to realize they were dealing with a trend.
According to Sgt. J.C. Perry of the Raleigh Police Department, there was video of the suspect the suspect using stolen ATM cards in each case. "It was after comparing the video in all these cases (that) they were able to ID the suspect," he said.
After the first robbery, on Aug. 10 in a Cary office, the suspect made off with accountant John L. Rigsbee's bank card, credit cards and a laptop computer. In an odd twist, the robber called police seven hours later to report that he had left Rigsbee tied up in a closet.
Similar incidents occurred in Raleigh on Aug. 27 and in Chapel Hill on Aug. 29.
