Restaurant worker's action led to arrest for slaying of nun

NORFOLK, Va. -- James Bradley was alone mopping the floor at a Burger King early Thursday when he turned around to see a shirtless man, bleeding from scratches on his chest and arms.

He knew it must be Adrian O'Neill Robinson, a Georgia man wanted for allegedly killing his father, abducting two nuns and killing and mutilating one of the women. Bradley had just been on the phone minutes earlier with a friend who told him about news reports of the search for Robinson, who had escaped into a marsh.

Startled, Bradley hit Robinson with the mop handle. Then he coolly pressed a silent alarm, chatted with Robinson and fed him to keep him there until officers arrived -- a peaceful end to a massive manhunt that began 22 hours earlier when Robinson eluded police after a brief car chase less than two miles from the restaurant.

"None of us expected it to end this way," police spokesman Chris Amos said. "With the acts he committed, we just knew if there was a quote 'loaded gun,' it was him."

As Bradley brandished the mop, he yelled at Robinson to get out of the store. Tensions eased a bit and the two men then talked.

A scared-looking Robinson said he was on the run and that he needed money to get out of town, recalled Bradley, 47, of Norfolk.

"He was telling me what happened to him, that his daddy tried to rape him," Bradley said. He said Robinson never mentioned the nuns or the slayings and did not divulge where he had been hiding.

Bradley said he did not know how Robinson got into the locked restaurant. He also said he never saw a weapon but that Robinson had his shirt wrapped around his hand as though he were trying to conceal a gun.

Robinson said he was hungry and wanted a burger, Bradley said. Bradley told him he could take a cookie or pie from the kitchen. Robinson ate four single-serving fried apple pies, washing them down with fruit punch, Bradley said.

By then, Bradley had already activated the alarm. When officers arrived, Bradley held onto Robinson to keep him from bolting, Bradley said.

"I guess I made their day," Bradley said of police, adding, "They can go home now" after working many hours to find Robinson.

Police began looking for Robinson on Sunday, when they say he shot his 56-year-old father, Henry, at their home in Hamilton, Ga. Family members told Georgia authorities that Robinson had accused his father of sexually assaulting him before shooting him 16 times.

Authorities said Robinson then hiked three miles to a church and broke into the mobile home where the nuns lived. Sister Luci Kristofik, 72, told investigators that Robinson was inside when they arrived home Sunday and that he took $900, bound and gagged them, put them in their car and drove to Norfolk, some 570 miles away.

Kristofik was found uninjured Tuesday at a Norfolk hotel.

Norfolk police officers spotted the nuns' car early Wednesday but said the driver fled on foot into a marsh. Police found human remains in the car.

The body of the other nun, Sister Philomena Fogarty, 64, was discovered soon afterward in an office parking lot in neighboring Virginia Beach. Georgia authorities said her head, hands and feet had been cut off.

It wasn't clear where Robinson had been between the escape and the arrest. He was familiar with the area, having briefly attended Norfolk State University and Old Dominion University, according to officials at those schools.