Three employees at the Spring Hill KFC are charged in a plot to hold up the store at closing time.
By DUANE BOURNE
Published March 25, 2004
SPRING HILL - Three KFC cooks served up more than Colonel Sanders' crispy chicken, investigators said, when on March 14 they hatched a plot to rob the Spring Hill fast food restaurant of $1,800.
But after Hernando investigators began looking into the possibility that the holdup was an "inside job," the restaurant employees confessed and implicated their accomplices, said sheriff's spokesman Lt. Joseph Paez.
On Tuesday, sheriff's deputies arrested the three cooks, Aaron L. Williams, 22, of 9072 Blackstone Road, Spring Hill; Samantha Barker, 17, of 9772 Blackstone Road, Spring Hill; and Stephen Giddins, 16, of 13380 Crowell Road, Brooksville.
Giddins' brother, Brian, a transporter at Oak Hill Hospital, was arrested at the Sheriff's Office about 6 p.m. Tuesday. He was charged with one count of armed robbery, a felony.
Williams, Barker and Stephen Giddins were charged as principals to armed robbery in the plot to rob their employer. Bail was set at $10,000, court records show.
The robbery occurred shortly after 10 p.m. March 14 when, witnesses said, two men barged through a rear door of the KFC as it closed for business. Brandishing a chrome handgun and a hammer, the suspects ordered several employees onto the floor, a sheriff's report said.
While the men robbed several employees, one of them, later identified as Brian Giddins, threatened to shoot anyone who looked at him, an arrest report said. He and the other accomplice then stole $1,800 in cash from a back office, the report said. Police did not release the identity of the second robber.
When deputies arrived, they found Williams waiting in the parking lot. He reportedly told deputies the suspects had left in a Honda Accord.
A Hernando detective focused the investigation on the employees when it appeared the robbery was carried out by someone familiar with the restaurant, Paez said.
During questioning, Barker and Williams told an investigator they had staged the incident and implicated Brian and Stephen Giddins.
In addition, Williams and Barker said they had suggested the suspects enter the restaurant as an employee took out the trash, the report said.
The investigation is ongoing and may lead to additional arrests, Paez said Wednesday.
