by Jamie Stockwell, Washington Post
A Temple Hills man who tried to rob a Camp Springs convenience store died Sunday morning after being restrained by a customer who was trying to help store employees foil the attempt, police said yesterday.
Cpl. Diane Richardson, a Prince George’s County police spokeswoman, said that James R. Thompson, 37, of the 3800 block of St. Barnabas Road, was pronounced dead minutes after Morningside police officers, who had arrived to arrest him, realized that Thompson had stopped breathing as he lay on the white linoleum floor of the store.
Richardson said Thompson’s body was taken to the Maryland State Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy. It had not been completed yesterday. She said Thompson’s death is being investigated by county homicide detectives, who handle every seemingly unnatural death.
Richardson said results of the police investigation would be sent to the state’s attorney’s office.
Prince George’s District Court records show that Thompson had a history of drug charges. He was released last week from the county’s detention center after a theft charge against him was dismissed, nearly three months after he was jailed. A misdemeanor drug charge against him was placed on the “stet” docket a week earlier. Charges on the docket are routinely dismissed after a year if the defendant does not incur new charges.
The incident that led to Thompson’s death began about 3 a.m. Sunday, when a man walked into the 7-Eleven in the 6400 block of Auth Road and began stuffing packs of cigarettes into a black bag he had, Richardson said.
Officers with the Morningside Police Department -- a small agency in the municipality located between Suitland Parkway and Andrews Air Force Base -- arrived at the store a short time later and found a 6-foot-2, 280-pound Suitland man sitting atop Thompson. Thompson is described in court documents as being 5 feet 7 inches tall and 150 pounds.
Police did not release the name of the Suitland man because they said he is a witness. Richardson said the man is 20 and was one of three people in the store when the incident began.
Richardson said the other two in the store were employees -- a man and woman -- who were working the overnight shift at the store, which is sandwiched between one- and two-story single-family houses and a Shell service station.
She said witnesses told police that Thompson walked in, went to the counter, grabbed various brands of cigarettes and stuffed them in his bag. The employees, she said, approached him and asked him to stop.
"[Thompson] said to them to back off, that he had a gun and that he had recently come out of jail and wouldn’t be going back,” Richardson said.
As Thompson made his way toward the front of the store, the male employee approached him again and began to argue with him, she said.
The ruckus caught the attention of the customer, Richardson said, who raced to the front of the store to help restrain Thompson. Thompson bit the customer in the arm, she said, but the man was still able to wrestle Thompson to the ground and sit on him until authorities arrived a short time later.
As the officers began to handcuff Thompson, Richardson said, the customer who had restrained him stood up, and the officers realized that Thompson wasn’t breathing. Paramedics were called to the scene, and Thompson was pronounced dead minutes later.
A knife, not a gun, was recovered from Thompson, Richardson said.
Relatives of Thompson could not be located yesterday.
At the 7-Eleven yesterday, business was brisk. The manager on duty, who declined to give his full name, would not comment on the incident, instead referring calls to Lloyd Scott at the chain’s Washington area corporate office.
Scott was out of the office yesterday, his voice mail stated, and a message left for him was not returned.