Suspect in store break-in left behind photo in phone

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

— Coty Dyer was arrested on suspicion of robbery last week when he was identified from a photograph on a cell phone found at the Fort Smith store that was broken into.

Dyer, 27, of Fort Smith was charged with robbery in the Aug. 28 break-in at Boost Mobile at 1201 Towson Ave. He will be arraigned on the charge in Fort Smith District Court on Thursday, according to court records. He’s being held in the Sebastian County jail in lieu of $7,500 bond.

A police report stated that Billy Harrell, 23, was sleeping in the backroom of Boost Mobile about 1 a.m. Aug. 28, when he heard glass breaking. Investigating, he told police he found a man, later identified as Dyer, carrying several phone cases.

Harrell confronted the man with the phone cases and the man hit him in the face. Harrell responded by throwing the man to the ground and punching him unconscious, the report stated.

According to the report, Harrell tied up the man in the backroom of the store andwent to call store owner Marshall Hoffman. When Harrell returned to the backroom, the man had freed himself and had run out a rear door, leaving behind a cell phone, a knife and one shoe.

Harrell chased the man, who was running toward nearby Sparks Regional Medical Center, but couldn’t catch him, the report stated.

Harrell returned to the store, where he and Hoffman examined the cell phone, which came from Boost Mobile, according to the report. They found a photo on the phone of the man Harrell said he struggled with. Hoffman thought the man looked like a distant relative of his wife.

His wife confirmed that the man in the photo was Dyer, the report stated.

When police searched the area around Sparks, they found the other shoe in the hospital and Dyer hiding in a storage room. A security guard told police that Dyer had gotten into a fight with a hospital employee shortly before they arrived, the report said.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 8 on 09/05/2012