Gunmen rob Gwinnett DQ, car-jack customer, get nothing, police say

By Marcus K. Garner

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Three guys in two Cadillacs go to a Dairy Queen.

No, this isn’t the start of some bad joke, but the beginning of a bizarre caper that apparently left the alleged crooks bruised and mostly empty-handed.

And one victim an unlikely hero with a slightly banged-up car.

Police were called around 11 a.m. Friday to the DQ at the corner of Peachtree Industrial Boulevard and South Old Peachtree Road in unincorporated Norcross.

Officers were told that the would-be bandits pulled up in two cars to the rear of the restaurant, and two of them entered with masks on and guns drawn.

The third man remained in one of the vehicles -- a white late-model Cadillac sedan carjacked Thursday from Clayton County -- the car's engine running as he waited for his cohorts  to run loot out to him.

“They forced the manager to open the safe and the cash registers,” Gwinnett County police spokesman Cpl. Jake Smith said.

One man went to the front of the DQ and robbed customers in the store, Smith said.

“The robbers were very aggressive,” he said, “putting the guns to peoples’ heads and bodies to take what they had.”

The bandit plundering the customers found the keys to a relatively new Dodge Charger and decided to take it, police say.

The robbery crew ran out to the late-model Cadillac and threw their two guns and the cash into the vehicle.

One of them jumped into the stolen Dodge, and the other two, into the second Cadillac -- a white DeVille -- and they sped off.

They abandoned the first Cadillac, still running, with a pair of the guns used in the heist and -- for reasons unknown -- the cash they stole, too.

Complicating the getaway even more, Smith said, a customer they had just robbed got into his own car and followed the Charger.

“The perpetrator in the Charger sees this and tries to execute a tight turn [to get away],” Smith said. “And the customer runs into him.”

That bandit jumped out of the wrecked car and fled on foot.

Gwinnett police found the other two in the DeVille, changing clothes. They ran, too.

After a lengthy manhunt involving helicopters and police dogs, two suspects were caught; the third remains at large, Smith said. Charges are pending.

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