Police have released the names of the three men who have been arrested and charged with a pair of 7-Eleven ATM robberies in Montgomery County, Maryland, and another attempted heist, and said the three might be connected to a monthslong string of thefts.
The three men arrested in the early hours of Tuesday were Deandre N. Jackson, 27, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland; Omar Barnes, 28, of Southeast D.C., and Janarro R. Hewett, 27, of no confirmed address, acting county police Chief Russ Hamill said at a news conference Wednesday.
Hamill said the three were arrested after an incident at about 3:45 a.m. Tuesday, in which a van and a pickup truck — both recently reported stolen in Prince George’s County — drove into a residential neighborhood before the truck drove into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven on Lockwood Drive, in White Oak. Two men wearing masks got into the truck and went into the store, while the truck backed up and looked like it was going to crash through the store window.
That was the method used in two recent ATM robberies in Montgomery County — one on April 30 on New Hampshire Avenue in Cloverly; the other, on Tech Road in Fairland.
When police officers converged on the store, Jackson and Barnes ran off, but were arrested.
Hewett drove away, leading police on a chase on the Capital Beltway that came to an end when the truck crashed near Kenilworth Avenue.
There have been four such robberies in the county recently, Hamill said, and 18 ATM robberies at 7-Elevens in the D.C. area. Hamill said police were checking into all of them.
It’s not known whether the three were involved in other robberies — or, for that matter, whether they had help from other people — but Hamill said the robberies couldn’t have been pulled off by just anyone.
“This isn’t just driving [around] and deciding ‘Let’s do this,’” Hamill added.
The thefts, he said, required stealing a truck and a van each time, working quickly enough so that the auto thefts wouldn’t be in the computer system yet; staking out the stores; crashing through windows; loading the ATMs into the van and taking them somewhere else to open them, which in itself requires specialized skills and tools.
“It took some skill to pull that off,” Hamill said. “They knew what they were doing.”
All three are being held without bond; each is being charged with two counts of robbery and one count of attempted robbery.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly named Montgomery County’s police chief. The story has now been updated to correctly name the acting police chief.
