Family members are stunned that a former high school basketball standout and college student has been arrested with another man in connection with at least two liquor store robberies in the north metro area, Channel 2 Action News reports.
“We didn’t grow up around any of this,” Brittany Reid, sister of Jonathan Blake Reid of Johns Creek, told Channel 2. “They’re good kids. … They’ve never done anything like this.”
Reid, 21, and Jamario Stephan Barnwell, 21, of Union City are being held without bond in the Forsyth County Detention Center on armed robbery and other charges, authorities said.
Reid is a former varsity basketball player and graduate of Chattahoochee High School who was attending Georgia Perimeter College, family members said. Information about Barnwell was not immediately available.
The two men are accused of the Aug. 26 robbery of a liquor store on State Bridge Road in Johns Creek and a stickup Friday night of a liquor store on Peachtree Parkway in Forsyth County.
Lt. Col. Gene Moss of the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office credited alert employees at a neighboring business of the Forsyth store with helping to solve the crime.
Earlier Friday evening, the workers noticed a suspicious vehicle parked behind the shopping center.
“As these same employees were getting ready to close their store, they saw that this vehicle had moved around to the front of their business and had backed into a parking space,” Moss said. “At that time, the employees wrote down the license plate number of the car.”
The car was a dark-colored 2009 Toyota Corolla, and its tag was registered to an address in the 400 block of De Malle Court in Johns Creek.
Johns Creek police went to the home Friday and found the car and Reid and Barnwell. The two men were arrested, and officers recovered a black book bag with money and a white T-shirt in it. The gun used in the Forsyth robbery has not been found.
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