Fairfax County police on Sunday arrested a man suspected of robbing two gas stations in Centreville and one in Chantilly. He is Will Cater Jr., 43, of no fixed address. Acting on a tip, police nabbed him at 4:15 p.m. in the 4400 block of St. Edwards Place in the City of Fairfax.
Actually, police believe he robbed seven gas stations and a convenience store in this county and one gas station in Loudoun County — for a total of nine crimes. Following his arrest, authorities transported him to the Loudoun County line and turned him over to the Sheriff's Office there.
Loudoun has charged Cater with robbery and malicious wounding in connection with the June 19 robbery of the Dulles Shell station on Route 28 in Sterling; City of Fairfax police have charged him with the June 27 robbery of a Crown station on Lee Highway. He was held without bond in the Loudoun County jail.
Cater is suspected of robbing three Shell stations, two Exxons, two Mobils, and a Crown, plus a mini-mart. Locally, police believe he may have robbed a Shell station, May 30, at 13400 Lee Highway in Centreville; a Mobil, June 10, at 14010 St. Germain Drive in Centreville; and an Exxon, June 25, in the 2900 block of Centreville Road in Chantilly.
The most recent offense here was the one in Chantilly, last Friday, June 25. According to police, a man entered that Exxon station around 2:30 a.m. and demanded money. Then, they said, "The suspect hit the clerk in the upper body with a wooden stick. This robbery [was] the latest in a series of robberies where the victim assault[ed] the clerk with a blunt, stick-like object before stealing cash or a cash register."
The victim, a 57-year-old Herndon man, was not injured. The suspect — who police believe may be Cater — took cash and drove away in a white SUV. Authorities say the stick used to assault the clerks in the various robberies may actually be a small, souvenir baseball bat.
In addition to the gas-station robberies in Centreville and Chantilly, police want to question Cater about the following offenses: May 24, Mobil Station, City of Fairfax; June 8, convenience store, 6691 Backlick Road; June 12, Shell station, 8225 Gunston Corner Lane; and June 22, Exxon Station, 5239 Rolling Road in Springfield.
In a June 29 affidavit for a warrant to search Cater's white, 2000 Ford Explorer, Det. Michael Boone of the City of Fairfax Police Department gave details of two of the Fairfax City robberies in which Cater is a suspect.
* On May 24, around 12:20 a.m., a man robbed the Plantation Mobil gas station at 10100 Lee Highway. While the clerk was getting money out of the cash register and putting it into a white, plastic bag for the robber, wrote Boone, "the suspect began beating the victim with a wooden stick, about two feet long, on the hand, forearm and leg." He stated that the man left the gas station with about $300 in cash — and a 12-pack of Icehouse beer he reached in and swiped from the business' beer cooler.
* Then last Sunday, June 27, around 3:20 a.m., a man walked into the Crown gas station at 10800 Lee Highway, pulled out a large stick and ordered the clerk to open the cash register. He did and placed his hands into the air, and the robber helped himself to $60 from the register. Then, wrote Boone, as in the other robberies, "the suspect began beating the victim with the stick, several times, in the neck, hands and on one leg."
However, a color video-surveillance tape of that robbery showed the beating, as well as the clothes the assailant/robber was wearing. In both the June 19 Loudoun robbery and the June 27 Fairfax robbery, wrote Boone, the suspect first asked to use the bathroom before striking and robbing the clerk. And in both instances, he was seen leaving in a white SUV — a Ford Explorer.
Boone also noted that, on June 27, he interviewed Cater's girlfriend at her house, and she gave the detective the clothes Cater was wearing when he arrived at her home, around 5 a.m. that morning. Boone wrote that the blue shirt and blue shorts with dark-blue and white stripes she handed him appeared to be the same clothing worn by the suspect "as depicted in the surveillance video from the Crown gas station."
Victims in several of the other robberies told police the suspect wore a baseball cap and a gray Adidas T-shirt. When police executed the search warrant, Tuesday night, the items seized from Cater's Ford Explorer included: Various ball caps, a gray Adidas T-shirt, almost $40 in cash and coins, a brown leather glove, watch, keys, driver's license and registration, birth certificate, lottery tickets and a tire iron.