Suspect surrenders - Detectives investigating if man is linked to robbery
A crowd gathered early and stayed through most of the hour-and-a-half standoff Monday as police, many with guns drawn, encircled a man inside a sport utility vehicle on the railroad tracks near Dorchester Road.
Previous story
Man surrenders peacefully to police, published 12/29/08
Later, authorities would say the man had just led them on a chase and was armed with a gun. Charleston police were investigating whether he was one of two suspects who robbed a West Ashley bank the same morning.
The throng of 100 or so onlookers at Kent Avenue, about a block from the scene, included some of the man's family. As time wore on, emotions grew raw. Relatives recited the Lord's Prayer and begged for mercy.
"His life's in your hands, Father," one woman wailed.
Their prayers were answered when the man surrendered peacefully a few minutes before 1 p.m.
As officers spoke with the man through an open window of a full-size Ford SUV, he had asked for one police officer by name.
North Charleston Deputy Chief William Barfield said he knew the man for most of his career with the Police Department. He first met him as he was just starting his career and the man was in his teens.
"We had established a relationship over the years," Barfield said. "You'd lock him up, but that doesn't mean he was a bad person."
Barfield arrived at the scene and helped persuade the man to give up. Then he walked over to the man's mother in the crowd and handed her a cell phone from her son. While talking to the news media afterward, Barfield declined to discuss the specifics of his conversation out of respect for the suspect's privacy.
North Charleston police had chased the SUV along Dorchester Road shortly after a bank-robbery call in West Ashley.
Two men had entered the Wachovia bank at 828 Orleans Road around 11:15 a.m. Only one of the pair was armed, but he carried two handguns, said Charles Francis, public information officer for Charleston police. The men left with an undisclosed amount of money and left in a white SUV.
Charleston police were investigating the possibility that the man who surrendered in North Charleston was connected to the bank robbery, Francis said, but had not charged anybody as of Monday night.
