By Steve Thompson
Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — The man apparently looked innocent enough. An officer spotted his white Ford Mustang pulled partway onto the sidewalk with its flashers on, according to Dallas police reports.
“I need your help,” the man said, out of breath. “I’ve run out of gas.”
The officer agreed and helped push the Mustang to a nearby northwest Dallas gas station. Then the officer drove on.
Minutes passed before a dispatch sounded over his squad car’s radio: Be on the lookout for a white Ford Mustang whose driver was a suspect in two aggravated robberies that had just occurred.
It wasn’t the first time Wednesday morning that the suspect, a congenial-looking 43-year-old ex-convict named Timothy Franklin, had taken advantage of someone’s generosity, police say. But now that he’s back in jail, it could be his last for a while.
The chain of events, reconstructed from police reports, began about 9:20 a.m., as a 76-year-old woman pulled her black Lexus SUV into a parking space in front of a business at 6020 Sherry Lane in North Dallas.
A clean, white 2001 Mustang pulled in two spaces away. As the woman got out of her car, a man put his arms around her and forced her down into the driver’s seat.
“Give me your purse,” he demanded.
“No,” the woman said.
“I’ve got a gun.”
“No, you don’t.”
They began to struggle, and he tugged at her 2-carat, heart-shaped diamond ring.
“It felt like he was trying to break my hand,” the woman told police.
She screamed for help, and witnesses started noticing. The man let her go, leaving her hand black and blue. He jumped back into the Mustang and fled as witnesses took down the license plate number.
Ten minutes later, about 9:30 a.m., what witnesses described as a white, two-door car pulled up to a home in the 10600 block of Park Preston Drive in the Preston Hollow neighborhood.
In front of the brick home, a 62-year-old woman stood with some luggage, waiting to be taken to the airport. The woman, a Park Cities real estate broker, carried a $500 black Prada purse over her shoulder.
The man in the car asked her directions to the home of Dallas real estate mogul Harlan Crow. He said he had an invitation to an event being put on there by the Baylor Health Care System Foundation, and former Vice President Dick Cheney was to speak.
The man stepped out of his car and took a book of Dallas maps from his trunk. As the woman looked at the map, trying to help, he grabbed her purse. He dragged her with it as he jumped back into the driver’s seat and drove away.
Finally, the woman became dislodged from the purse and fell to the street.
A witness saw what happened and called 911. He remained with her until an ambulance took her to Baylor University Medical Center, where she was treated for a concussion, a possible broken nose, bruising to both eyes, cuts on her face and chin, and scrapes along both hands and arms.
It was about 9:47 a.m. when Officer Timothy Drummond spotted a white Mustang partially blocking the right turn lane at Forest Lane and Inwood Road.
Minutes later, as he heard dispatchers putting out a description of the getaway car -- a white Ford Mustang, very clean, driven by a black man wearing a ball cap -- Drummond realized he probably just helped get the robber back on the road.
The 18-year Dallas police veteran turned his squad car around and headed back toward the intersection. He spotted the Mustang at a red light just up Inwood Road at Willow Lane. After it turned south onto the Dallas North Tollway, Drummond pulled it over. He ordered Franklin to the ground at gunpoint.
Franklin was booked into the Dallas County Jail on $150,000 bail. He faces two aggravated robbery charges.
Records show he was released from prison in 2007 after serving 15 years. His charges then: two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon and aggravated robbery of an elderly person.
Copyright 2009 Dallas Morning News