Tifton Post Office bandit caught in record time
TIFTON, GA -
A Tift County man is in jail facing possible federal charges after police say he robbed the Tifton Post Office.
It happened Saturday morning as customers were inside, but the getaway didn’t go as planned for 37-year-old Gregory Denson.
The Tifton Post Office is a fairly busy place on a Saturday morning, and its location in a busy part of town doesn’t necessarily provide a lot of hiding places. So when some folks saw a man hiding in some bushes, they called the cops. But what’s more surprising is where those bushes are located.
‘I cant recall the Tifton Post Office being robbed anytime in the past 10 years, at least,” said Tifton Police Lt. Lee Dunston.
But Saturday morning that’s exactly what happened when a man walked in and passed a note to unsuspecting postal clerk, “I’m not going to go into exactly what it said, but it said she was to fill a bag up with money or he would shoot,” said Dunston.
The unmasked robber never pulled a gun. “The clerk said he had his hand in the pocket of a jacket he had on and she believed he had a gun.”
Gun or not, he got the cash and took off running. But his getaway sprint was short lived at best.
“He left out of the west most doors there at the post office toward the Board of Education office which is located on Northridge.
It’s the building right next door to the post office. It’s also where the suspect decided would be a good place to hide from the cops who were already in the area.
“Some of them were flagged down by a citizen at a nearby ball field who said there was somebody hiding in the bushes at the board of education office.”
Tift County Deputies looked in the bushes and found 37-year-old Gregory Denson. His hideout foiled by folks who spotted him going in the bushes during little league baseball practice at a nearby ball field.
“They were willing to talk to law enforcement and a quick response by law enforcement from both the Tifton Police Department and the Tift County Sheriff’s Office,”
From the time of the robbery to his capture took less than five minutes. Now investigators say they found evidence at the scene that linked Denson to the robbery.
The U.S. Postal Inspectors have been informed of the robbery because a post office is federal property. It will be up to them to decide if they’ll pursue federal charges.
Detectives didn’t find a gun on Denson, but just that fact that he claimed to have one is enough to charge him with armed robbery.
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