MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Germantown man wanted in a robbery spree in East Memphis is behind bars.
On Monday night, WREG aired pictures released by the Memphis Police Department of a man in the Walgreens parking lot on Kirby Parkway. On Tuesday, police said they captured the suspect, Michael Dean, at his mother’s home in Cordova.
Police said Dean was responsible for not just this armed robbery but another robbery and an attempted robbery.
He now sits at 201 Poplar on a slew of charges, including armed robbery. His bail is set at $1,000,000.
WREG pulled the police reports, and the circumstances around Dean’s alleged robberies are rather bizarre.
“That is definitely him. Yes, yes,” Ida Engelberg said Tuesday morning.
She was shocked to see the mugshot of 37-year-old Michael Dean and learn that he is now in jail.
Police said Dean was the hooded robber captured on surveillance video at the Walgreens on Kirby Parkway.
“That scares me,” said Engelberg.
Officers said Dean robbed a woman and her son at gunpoint Saturday after they got into a fender bender with someone else in the pharmacy’s parking lot.
The next day police said Dean struck again, this time in the parking lot of Kroger just two miles from the pharmacy. Here police claim Dean stole a woman’s purse, but no weapon was ever seen, and the victim said as he was driving away Dean told her to cancel her credit cards.
A few hours later police said Dean last hit the Little Caesars Pizza on Park Avenue.
“It was kind of a weird story at first because he came in, demanded money of course. We told him that we couldn’t give him any money and then he kinda looked at us demanded it again, we told him we couldn’t do it and he kinda left the building,” said Tom Hartley, the area supervisor for Little Caesars.
Police and employees said Dean wasn’t armed.
“We’re really happy it went the way it did with no one getting hurt,” Hartley said.
No one answered the door at Dean’s Germantown home or at his mother’s Cordova home on Tuesday.
However, Hartley is glad he’s now behind bars.
“Little mini crime spree on his sake but ended up where he was supposed to be.”
WREG checked, and Dean has a lengthy criminal history, which includes charges of drug possession, theft and robbery.
Dean will appear before a judge early next week.
