Police have arrested a man accused of robbing a woman at knifepoint in a Home Depot parking lot in northeast Atlanta last month.
Steve Jerome White, 64, was charged with armed robbery, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and possession of a knife during the commission of a felony in connection with the violent Feb. 24 encounter, police said in a news release Thursday.
According to investigators, White slipped into a 59-year-old woman’s SUV as she loaded items into her vehicle after shopping at the Home Depot at the Lindbergh Plaza shopping mall at 2525 Piedmont Road. Police reports indicate he sat beside her in the passenger’s seat and stuck a knife to her throat, threatening to kill her during an ordeal that lasted several minutes.
Credit: Channel 2 Action News
Credit: Channel 2 Action News
The victim told police the man demanded a ride to the bus station and enough cash to get to Alabama. The woman tried to talk him down and de-escalate the situation, according to police, who said White eventually got frustrated and snatched the woman’s necklace and an undisclosed amount of cash from her wallet before taking off.
The victim was left with minor cut wounds from the knife White allegedly held to her throat.
Investigators combed through hours of surveillance video and found footage of White fleeing the area on a MARTA train, according to Lt. Ryan Stephens, commander of the Atlanta Police Department’s robbery unit. Police also searched surveillance video from the Home Depot parking lot and other cameras throughout the shopping plaza.
That helped detectives home in on White, who they were able to identify after issuing an alert for him based on the footage.
He was taken into custody March 10 in downtown Atlanta, Stephens said. White was arrested without incident on an unrelated DeKalb County warrant and held in custody in DeKalb while Atlanta detectives looked for evidence to connect him to the robbery.
Police noted that White is a felon who’s been arrested nearly 50 times and served 10 prison stints in Georgia since 1974.
“We continued working the investigation and eventually we were able to identify him as the attacker of the woman from Home Depot,” Stephens said.
White remained in the DeKalb County jail Thursday. Investigators said they found no family members or any other relationships connecting White with Alabama.
“If he was trying to get to Alabama, he would have gone to Alabama. But he, luckily for us, stayed in the city of Atlanta,” Stephens said.
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