Cape man admits to three robberies

A 23-year-old Cape Girardeau man admitted he was responsible for three Monday robberies, including one at a local Walgreens, according to a probable-cause statement filed Tuesday in Cape Girardeau County Circuit Court.

Bryan D. Ward is in custody on $250,000 bond in connection with an armed robbery at Walgreens, 1 S. Kingshighway, and a pair of early morning armed robberies at convenience stores in Dexter, Mo., court records show.

On Monday, Walgreens reported a young man came into the store about 7:20 a.m., handed pharmacy staff a note written on yellow paper and told them to "read it and not to say anything," Sgt. Don Perry of the Cape Girardeau Police Department wrote in a probable-cause statement filed in the case.

After reading the note, which demanded Percocet and hydrocodone, Walgreens employees gave the man a bag containing an opened bottle of oxycodone, Perry wrote.

The man told employees he wanted to leave through the back door, but after they told him an alarm would sound if the door was opened, he left through the front door, got into a black car and drove away, Perry wrote.

About 10 a.m., officers learned someone had called to check the welfare on Ward, who had been making suicidal threats in the past week and whose whereabouts were unknown, Perry wrote.

Based on descriptions of Ward and his vehicle, officers connected him with the robberies at Walgreens and two Dexter convenience stores, Perry wrote.

A witness positively identified Ward as the suspect in a still photograph taken from a Walgreens surveillance video, Perry wrote.

Just before 1 p.m., officers arrested Ward at Dexter Bar-B-Que in Cape Girardeau, where he was trying to pick up a paycheck, and impounded his vehicle, a black 2012 Dodge Avenger, Perry wrote.

Perry and another officer interviewed Ward, who told them he had spent the night at a motel in Poplar Bluff, Mo., before leaving early Monday morning and driving to a Break Time convenience store in Dexter, where he took in a nine-millimeter automatic handgun and a plastic store bag, demanded and received money and fled, Perry wrote.

Ward told the officers he then went to a Murphy USA convenience store in Dexter, where he used a similar approach to get more money, before coming to Cape Girardeau with a handwritten note he presented to a Walgreens clerk, demanding pain pills, Perry wrote.

The note, found later in Ward's car, stated: "No one will be hurt do as I say. This is a robbery! Stay calm I will not hurt you. I have a gun. Please be cool and don't make me use it or get smart and make me bad. Give me all the pain pills -- Percocet and Hydro," Perry wrote.

A search of Ward's car also turned up $1,022 in cash, 278 oxycodone pills, a 9-mm automatic handgun loaded with one round, and two yellow plastic store bags, including one containing "a large quantity of loose and rolled coins," Perry wrote.

Online court records show no prior offenses for Ward in Missouri.

A warrant for Ward's arrest charges him with one count each of first-degree pharmacy robbery and armed criminal action.

epriddy@semissourian.com

388-3642

Pertinent address:

1 S. Kingshighway, Cape Girardeau, MO