Second suspect caught

Aundrea Lee Darrel Brown

By LEE WILLIAMS
lwilliams@TheCitizenNews.com

The second suspect sought for his involvement in a botched armed robbery at Tinseltown Tuesday that led to a 24-hour manhunt that included over 100 law enforcement officers is now in custody.

Darrel Brown, 45, of Douglasville, was arrested at about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday by a small band of officers who guarded the 17-screen movie theater overnight in hopes of finding the suspect.

“We had reduced it to just a basic perimeter around the outside of the building. We had just a few officers on the inside of the building,” Fayetteville Police spokesman Detective Steve Crawshaw said Wednesday afternoon. “While those officers were inside they started moving around in the building just sitting in different areas to see if they could hear anything. While they were doing that they started noticing some things out of place, places he might have been, so they started looking into that.”

An out-of-place movie poster led them to the suspect.

"They looked down in between two sections of walls and they saw some insulation and stuff and he started moving a little bit,” Crawshaw said. “They gave commands. He stood up, raised his hands and gave up from there.”

Brown’s disappearing act was finally over, much to the relief of law enforcement officers. Brown, a slender male with cornrows, was led out of the building down a second-story metal staircase. He was taken to the Fayette County Jail for processing.

Brown’s co-conspirator, Aundrea Lee, 28, of Powder Springs, was arrested by Fayetteville police at about 1 a.m. Tuesday.

Brown and Lee face four counts of armed robbery, two counts of false imprisonment, one count of kidnapping and one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.    

The men were to have their first court appearance Thursday afternoon at the Fayette County Courthouse.      

The first-ever hostage incident at the massive Fayette Pavilion shopping center unfolded after one of the employees at Tinseltown tripped the panic alarm and alerted authorities early Tuesday morning. Fayetteville police responded and discovered they had a hostage situation on their hands.

Police found two managers tied to a chair at the business. One of the hostages was identified as theater general manager Dair Bradley. The other hostage was identified as an assistant manager, Caitlin Williams. A third person, also an assistant manager, was identified only as “Ms. Montgomery.” However, the names of the managers involved in the holdup have not been confirmed by police.

The suspects allegedly fled in the ceiling. Lee was captured, but Brown got away.

“One of the officers was able to grab a hold of one of the subjects’ feet and he fell out of the ceiling and we were able to apprehend him,” Crawshaw said.

A handgun allegedly used to hold the managers of the movie theater up was recovered at the scene. However, no one was injured in the mayhem.

After Brown fled, a swarm of vehicles from the Fayetteville Police Department, Fayette County Sheriff’s Department, Fulton County Police Department, Clayton County Police Department, Henry County Police Department, Pike County Sheriff’s Department, Georgia State Patrol and city and county fire departments filed into the rear movie theater parking lot to assist with the search.

Other officers dotted the perimeter with their patrol cars.

Officers worked hard to apprehend the suspect, but the mammoth size of the 17-screen facility, coupled with the temperature inside of the building being well into the 90s, hampered their effort. The contents of the 72,000-square-foot building also added to the difficulty of the search.

The officers used bullhorns to communicate with Brown, tinkered with the air conditioning to make the suspect uncomfortable and finally used pepper spray to flush Brown out, but to no avail.

The standoff situation impacted the theater’s bottom line as theater officials were forced to cancel their midnight premier of the blockbuster smash “Batman Begins.”

Unable to watch the movie at the Fayetteville theater, many residents simply camped out in the parking lot near the theater and watched the real-life drama unfold before their eyes.

The closed movie theater, barricades, a large police presence and two helicopters attracted the attention of dozens of Fayette County residents, including Ronnie Boatwright, who was surprised to learn that the theater had been taken under siege. “Things like this don’t happen in Fayette County,” Boatwright said.

Tony Ogles of Fayetteville said he wasn’t surprised the hostage standoff happened in his own backyard. He said the bad economy is to blame.

“I ain’t (surprised) because it’s hard with our country,” Ogles said Tuesday evening surrounded by a sea of microphones and television cameras. “The economy, with companies closing, and it causes some people, I’m not saying all people, but it causes some of them to take different measures to take care of their family and kids when money is a problem.”