Two Albertsons employees recognize and follow the car thieves used to rob their store.
By RICHARD DANIELSON
Published January 10, 2004
[Times photos: Douglas R. Clifford]
A car chase ended in Clearwater when Pinellas County sheriffs deputies arrested Stephan D. Grainger. Officials suspect he robbed six grocery stories in a week.
Pinellas sheriffs deputies chased this Geo Storm after getting a tip from two Albertsons workers who recognized the car from a store video.
LARGO - Kirk Naquin was eating lunch around noon Friday when he got a call from colleague Don Matz who was running some errands and saw a familiar car on Missouri Avenue.
It was an older green Geo Storm. Broken rear window. Missing hub cap. Defective tail light.
They knew this car. Someone had used it Tuesday in a robbery of the Albertsons supermarket where Naquin works as store director, and the surveillance camera had gotten a good shot of the vehicle.
Naquin, 37, got in his own pickup truck, and the two men followed the Storm as Naquin called authorities on his cell phone.
Within minutes, Pinellas County sheriff's deputies began pursuing the Storm, which fled at speeds of more than 90 mph, sheriff's officials said.
At 1:05 p.m., a pursuing deputy managed to cause the Storm to go into a spin at Keene and Belleair roads. There, deputies arrested Stephan D. Grainger, 45, of Largo, who sheriff's officials identified as a suspect in six grocery store holdups in mid and north Pinellas in less than a week.
"I just pulled out of the parking lot and kept the police on the phone until they caught him," Naquin said. "We were both at the same place at the same time almost and there was the car."
After Naquin and Matz, Albertsons drug manager, began following Grainger's car, deputies began moving to intercept it. Deputies tried to pull Grainger over around the TriCity Plaza near U.S. 19 and East Bay Drive.
"All the police tried to cage him in and he darted," Naquin said.
The pursuit took deputies onto U.S. 19 and 66th Street, among other roads, before ending. Grainger sustained minor injuries and was treated on the scene by paramedics before being released to the custody of sheriff's officials.
The robberies began Sunday night in Palm Harbor and were followed by more holdups in Tarpon Springs, Pinellas Park, Largo and Seminole, sheriff's officials said. In at least some of the robberies, Grainger showed store cashiers a note demanding money and either threatened to shoot them or reached toward his waistband as if he had a gun, deputies said.
Grainger did not get money in every robbery, but what he got was spent on crack cocaine, said sheriff's spokesman Mac McMullen. As of 9:15 p.m. Friday, Grainger had been charged with aggravated fleeing and eluding, attempted robbery and three counts of robbery and was being held at the Pinellas County Jail in lieu of $180,000 bail.
In addition, McMullen said another man, Jerry Kraus, 41, whose address was unavailable Friday, was charged in one of the Palm Harbor robberies. Kraus was in the car and knew what was going on during a robbery Sunday night of a Winn-Dixie on U.S. 19 in Palm Harbor, McMullen said. Kraus was being held at the jail Friday night on one charge of robbery with bail set at $10,000.
Naquin said he was just glad the authorities caught up with Grainger "and got him off the street." He didn't think Grainger knew he was being followed before deputies began chasing him Friday afternoon. Nor did he know where Grainger was going.
But, Naquin said, at the moment deputies appeared and started the chase, Grainger was in the turn lane that led to a Publix parking lot.
- Times researchers Caryn Baird and Cathy Wos contributed to this report.
