Prince George’s County Police are searching for a man who allegedly nabbed two purses, robbed a tanning salon and then ran two police cruisers off the road in a car chase northbound on Route 1 Sunday evening — all within about an hour.
In what District 1 Commander Robert Liberati called an unusual string of incidents, the man — who police described as a middle-aged white man — snatched the first purse outside the Pizza Hut north of the campus on Route 1 at about 4:30 p.m., then allegedly grabbed another outside the Clarion Inn at 5:12 p.m.
Just minutes later, a man walked into North Beach Tanning, in the Campus Village shopping center accross the street from the University View, at 5:24 p.m. and asked for change, witnesses said. When an employee reached for the cash, the man grabbed her from across the counter, took the money and fled, witnesses said.
“Police came in here asking questions at around 8,” said junior computer science major Oscar Pacheco, who works next door to the tanning salon at DP Dough. “They told us he just reached over the counter and took the money.”
An officer saw a car matching the description of the sedan used in the previous three crimes driving north on Route 1 shortly after police received word of the tanning salon robbery, county police spokeswoman Cpl. Erica Johnson said. When the officer tried to pull the car over, the driver didn’t stop, Johnson said.
Although exactly what happened next is unclear, Johnson said the suspect rammed his vehicle into the police cruiser near Tecumseh Street — near Jiffy Lube — at which point another officer took over the chase. The suspect crashed his car into the second officer’s cruiser near Hollywood Road in the same fashion as the first, Johnson said.
“Same thing happened to both cars — he rammed both of them,” she said.
The two police officers involved in the chase were not hurt following the crash, Liberati said.
As more officers joined in, the chase continued north into Beltsville, where the suspect fled on foot, leaving his vehicle near Virginia Manor Road and Muirkik Road, Johnson said.
“It’s a really wooded area around there — that’s where he took off,” she said.
Although police tried to follow him and even called in a canine unit to follow the man’s trail, the suspect remained at large Sunday night.
“No apprehension yet, but hopefully we’ll have a closure soon,” Liberati said at 11:30 p.m. Sunday, adding the case has been taken over by the county’s Criminal Investigations Division, which typically handles major crimes.
Liberati said the unusual nature of the string of incidents paired with the rapid pace with which they occurred and similar suspect descriptions tipped police off that they were seeking one man.
Although the investigation is ongoing, Liberati said it does not seem the suspect used a weapon in any of the incidents.
Workers at DP Dough, which was robbed over the summer, said despite how close to home Sunday’s crime wave hit, they’ve grown numb to it all.
“Hey, this is PG County — it’s a livable community,” said Ed Darnell, a student at Montgomery College who works at the eatery. “Or maybe you should say survivable.”
Senior staff writer Ben Present contributed to this report. mlang at umdbk dot com
