MIDVALE, Utah – Police believe the suspect in an aggressive robbery at an adult boutique may be the same person who is a suspect in a recent bank robbery.
Police said the suspect in question is 30-year-old Robbie Robinson, who was responsible for an armed crime spree eight years ago.
The robbery at Doctor John’s Lingerie occurred earlier in July and was caught on video, which shows an armed man chasing a clerk around inside the store. No shots were fired, and the suspect eventually fled with a small amount of cash.
Brittany works at Doctor John’s Lingerie, and she is a close friend of the clerk who was working when the robbery happened. She said the clerk was badly shaken by the robbery.
"And people should really think before they act and terrorize people because that's really what it is, it's a terrorizing act,” she said.
Based partly on security pictures from a nearby 7-Eleven, police originally arrested a man and questioned him about the robbery. Police eventually determined that man was not the suspect, and they reexamined the case.
"Detectives have been working on this since the incident happened,” said Lt. Justin Hoyal of the Unified Police Department.
A day after the robbery at the boutique, a U.S. Bank was robbed in Millcreek. Robinson was arrested a short time later at a Salt Lake City hotel. Police compared images from the robbery at Doctor John’s Lingerie to images captured at the bank robbery, and they said Robinson is now a person of interest in the lingerie store robbery.
Robinson was already a fugitive for violating his federal probation. Robinson served prison time for being the so-called “Suntan Bandit” in 2005. It is likely Robinson will be heading back to federal prison, but Brittany said she wishes he would have been captured earlier.
"It's life changing to the person that he did it to,” she said. “Emotionally, it's going to be hard for her to do everyday things that should not be hard for her to do after this. It's really just a traumatizing situation."
