Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
In the suspects' van after a Kash n' Karry heist are two-way radios and a scanner to monitor deputies' movements.
By MATTHEW WAITE
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 22, 2001
NEW PORT RICHEY -- The first sign that Sunday's wasn't the typical armed robbery at a store came when a robber went outside and called for a ride on a two-way radio, employees told investigators
Sheriff's deputies would later learn that inside the van that he called, the getaway driver had a radio scanner, with the sheriff's frequencies programmed in.
It wouldn't help.
Within minutes of the theft of cash from the register at Kash n' Karry, 9101 Little Road, just after 3:30 a.m., deputies tracked down and stopped a van that witnesses said was used in the robbery.
Grant Alan Cravener, 31, 4000 Marine Parkway in New Port Richey, and Laurie Ann Brown, 40, 7614 Coventry Drive in Port Richey, were arrested on one charge each of armed robbery and unlawful interception of electronic communication to commit armed robbery.
Pasco County sheriff's Sgt. Raymond Stanley said the two drove right by Deputy Matthew Kadel, one of the deputies responding to the robbery, on Embassy Boulevard. Kadel, while turning around to chase them, called in that he had spotted them.
Sheriff's supervisors had sent the Street Tactical Operations Patrol unit into the Regency Park area, getting another chance to test their strategy of flexible patrol units and massed manpower. The unit was started in July and meant to give patrol commanders more freedom to respond to problems.
Stanley said the van turned off onto side streets, and Deputy Marc Petruccelli, using other roads, cut the van off at the 10000 block of Kingswood Lane while Kadel got behind it. The chase was over.
Inside the van, deputies found the radios, the scanner, the knife the clerk said she saw during the robbery and the money from the till.
Cravener and Brown were both held without bail at the Pasco County jail Sunday night. Cravener had been released from state prison in May 2000 after serving a year for armed robbery in Marion County.
"It would not have been possible without the STOP unit being out there," Stanley said of the arrests.
-- Staff writer Matthew Waite can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6247 or (800) 333-7505, ext. 6247. His e-mail address is waite@sptimes.com.