Whited acquitted of armed robbery
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The defendant, Daniel Whited, 46, was found not guilty on two counts of aggravated robbery and one count of aggravated assault for the robberies last May of Pit Stop North and Pump n’ Pay. The verdict came after an hour and a half of jury deliberations.
The acquittal was rendered in the face of two eye witnesses, one in the each of the robberies, who identified Whited as the robber.
Andrea Hill, the clerk at Pit Stop North on May 16, said she saw Whited talking on a pay phone outside the Chancery Street store and then saw his face as he walked in the front door. She said the robber apparently put on a ski mask while inside the store and then confronted her.
“He put the gun in my side and said ‘this is a robbery, give me your money,'” Hill recalled, saying she remembered Whited well because he looked like Wayne Neal, a singer with the Little River Band. She also recalled he had hair like “Bozo the Clown” and that he walked away slowly from the store with the $300 he had taken.
Two days later, Pump n’ Pay fell victim to a robbery. Both crimes happened around noon.
In the case of Pump n’ Pay, Joyce Ferguson said the suspect was wearing a mask so she could not get a look at his face as he brandished his handgun.
“I called him a scumbag,” Ferguson recalled when the robber announced his intentions, noting the robber asked for “the rest” of the money after she handed him the cash. Hill had earlier testified the robber also asked for any cash which was hidden beneath the main money drawer.
Ferguson said she followed the robber outside and yelled at two Hispanic men at a nearby restaurant to stop the man who had just robbed the store.
Jose Hernandez said he approached the man, who had just shed his mask, but was turned back when he pointed a gun at him. Hernandez pointed out Whited as the man he saw that day, but said he had a small beard at the time. Hill said the man who robbed her store two days earlier was clean-shaven. Prosecutors maintained he had grown a thin beard in the two days between robberies. Whited had a full beard during trial Friday.
Hernandez said he saw the suspect drive away in a maroon Ford Ranger, heading toward Smithville on New Smithville Highway. Prosecutors pointed out Whited drove a truck fitting the description and lived in the direction where the truck disappeared.
Along with the eye-witness testimony, prosecutors pointed out the robber was wearing a long sleeve thermal undergarment on an otherwise warm day. They believe Whited did that to hide the many tattoos on his arms. Prosecutors also pointed out Hill picked Whited out of a photo lineup presented to him by McMinnville Police Department investigator Nichole Hutchins.
In light of the eye-witness testimony, the public defender’s office, which represented Whited, brought forth two people who gave Whited an alibi for the time of the first robbery.
Roger Fulson, the defendant’s brother-in-law, said the suspect was painting a cabin outside Pish-La-Ki on Harrison Ferry Mountain, at the time of the Pit Stop robbery. Prosecutors maintained Whited used one of Fulson’s guns to rob the store, suggesting he gained access to his gun collection without Fulson’s knowledge. Fulson said his guns were kept in a locked fire safe to which Whited did not have a key, even though he had a key to the Fulson house. Prosecutors questioned Fulson’s claim and pointed out Whited had been seen shooting guns behind the house on earlier occasions.
Whited’s girlfriend, Barbara Smith, said she was with him painting the cabin when the crime occurred. The restaurant is a 15-minute drive away from the store and Smith said Whited was not out of her sight long enough to commit the crime.
The defense also brought Whited’s former employer, Jeff Lance, to the stand. Lance said his company often bought fuel from the store and that he believed it was likely Whited went into the store on occasions after the robbery. The defense contended Hill may have seen Whited in the store after the robbery and therefore his face looked familiar on the photo lineup when she picked him out a month after the robbery.
To finalize the defense case, Stephanie Casey was brought to the stand. Casey, who was a Pump n’ Pay employee and had been robbed in the past, testified she saw a suspicious individual casing the store a few days before the robbery. She said she warned employees there could be a robbery. However, she noted she knew Whited and the suspicious person she saw in the store was not him.
“I think Stephanie Casey was the critical witness in this,” said Public Defender Dan Bryant. “She had been robbed before and knew what to look for and she said the guy who was casing the place was not Whited.”
Bryant said he felt Whited would be cleared on the Pump n’ Pay robbery but was nervous about the Pit Stop heist.
“It’s hard to overcome eye-witness testimony,” Bryant said. “But I believe the jury believed his alibi.”