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Guilty

Jury convicts two for theater robbery

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizen.com

Two men have been convicted in the June robbery at the Tinseltown Movie Theater in Fayetteville.

Andre Lee, 28, of Powder Springs and Darrell Brown, 45, of Douglasville, were convicted Thursday afternoon on two counts of armed robbery, three counts of kidnapping and one count each of possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.

Brown was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences plus a consecutive 15-year term, all without parole, by Fayette Superior Court Judge Christopher C. Edwards. Lee was sentenced to a total of 30 years, to be served consecutively.

Lee took the stand on his own behalf Wednesday, and he admitted that he and Brown were in the movie theater that night. But Lee said he didn’t use a gun during the robbery, and he had no idea Brown planned to use guns in the heist.

“I looked out,” Lee said. “That’s it.”

Lee admitted that he left his ID card back in the car they left parked behind the theater, where they snuck up a stairway to an unsecured door, giving them access to the theater’s offices and ultimately the business’ safe.

Lee said after it took an extended period of time for Brown to get the money, he began to think he should leave.

“After it started going down like that, I was ready to leave,” Lee said.

Prosecutor Randy Coggin noted that Lee could have helped two employees who were tied up to get away safely, but he declined to do so.

Brown declined to testify in the case.

During the two day trial, jurors were shown video from a security camera that depicted some of the attack on the three movie theater employees.

Although the assailants were wearing ski masks to conceal their identity, two victims were able to describe and identify the athletic shoes both attackers wore, which police said Brown and Lee were wearing when they were arrested at the scene.

Dair Bradley, the theater manager, testified Tuesday that the incident began when two black men wearing ski masks accosted her as she left an office inside the theater complex. Both were carrying guns that they pointed at her head, she said.

At one point, Bradley said she thought she and the other two employees would be killed after the attacker she identified as “the skinny one” became enraged upon learning that police were on the other end of an internal phone call he told her to take in an effort to ease the suspicions of other employees who were gathering for a prescreening of “Batman Begins.”

“I thought at that point we were all dead, that he’d kill me first and then go to the other two and kill them,” Bradley said Tuesday.

Lee and Brown tried to escape into the ceiling when several Fayetteville police officers burst into the office where they held the three employees, but Officer David Cagle was able to pull Lee down to the ground where officers handcuffed him, officials said. Brown escaped to the ceiling where officers couldn’t reach him, and he played a cat-and-mouse game with police as the theater was locked down for almost 24 hours until he was spotted by Special Agent Lamar Dyar of the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department’s Drug Task Force, officials said.

Dyar spotted Brown in between a firewall near the ground, trying to hide under insulation and other debris, officials said.

Lee’s father, Andre Lee Sr., testified Wednesday that the robbery occurred after he and his son went to visit the grave of his wife, who had passed away from lung cancer 10 months before.

Lee Sr. said his son became troubled after watching his mother die of the disease.

But Coggin noted that the younger Lee got in trouble years before and was convicted of several offenses in April 1997, including two counts of entering an auto, possession of a sawed off shotgun and possession of a concealed weapon.