By Brendan McCarthy
The New Orleans Times-Picayune
NEW ORLEANS, La. — The suspect in several smoothie shop heists was arrested late Monday after a sheriff’s deputy recognized him from surveillance footage.
New Orleans police booked Rolmell Blanks, 27, of New Orleans, with seven counts of armed robbery for allegedly sticking up smoothie shops, a bakery, a laundry and a couple discount stores.
After seeking the stocky man in sweat pants caught on surveillance camera footage for a month, New Orleans police received a call on Monday from an Orleans Parish criminal sheriff’s deputy, said Officer Sabrina Richardson, a spokesperson for the New Orleans Police Department. The deputy had recognized the man on camera and provided detectives a photo of Blanks taken while he was in a work-release program, police said.
Detectives arrested him Monday at his residence in the 500 block of City Park Avenue.
Blanks, in the recent robbery spree, is believed to have first robbed a laundry in the 5300 block of Canal Boulevard on June 29, police say. Then on July 3, he is suspected of robbing a bakery in the 5200 block of Elysian Fields Avenue. The robber then held up three smoothie shops on July 5, 22 and 24, as well as two discount stores, one in the 1700 block of North Rampart Street on July 6 and one in the 300 block of North Broad Street on July 17.
In each case, police said Blanks walked into the business, implied that he was carrying a weapon and demanded money. In each case, he got it. Police declined to release how much money the man has stolen to date.
The most recent robbery took place on July 28 at a gas station at Tulane Avenue and South Jefferson Davis Parkway, police said. Camera footage, released by the NOPD, shows a man in sweat pants walk into the gas station, head straight to the stand-up cooler, turn slowly toward a stack of junk food and make a determined stroll to the register.
He takes his hand from his pocket, slides it under his black T-shirt and points at the cashier. He receives money and walks slowly away, his hand swinging by his side.
Blanks was previously arrested in 2004 on robbery charges, according to court records. He pleaded guilty later that year to simple robbery.
Copyright 2007 Times-Picayune