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Ramsey County prosecutors on Wednesday charged three young men in connection with a spate of armed gas station robberies early Sunday. Authorities also announced the arrest of one of the suspects, who fled in a rideshare vehicle and eluded capture for three days.
Over the course of three hours, authorities say Dylan Charles Jungwirth, 21, pulled a gun on employees at three gas stations in Roseville and Little Canada, while Kemonie Terry Hurd, 18, served as his lookout.
The men allegedly punched one victim in his head after he grabbed Jungwirth's gun. Investigators said the 58-year-old employee of a Roseville BP station was found bleeding and had suffered an eye injury but was able to run out to Cleveland Ave. in search of help.
Jungwirth, Hurd and a third man, identified as 21-year-old Kenneth Toy Spight, are alleged to have fled in a Ford Fusion at more than 100 miles an hour as police briefly gave chase near County Road C and Snelling Ave. The sedan crashed near the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. Authorities say Jungwirth stole the Fusion on Saturday in Robbinsdale after its owner left the engine running with the key inside.
Police arrested Spight in a rail yard along Pierce Butler Route on Sunday morning after a foot chase. He was allegedly found with $169 in cash, a face mask and a phone that showed a dozen unread text messages from Hurd.
Spight initially denied being involved in the robberies and said the cash was from “donations.” Spight later allegedly told police that when the Fusion crashed, he was in the back seat, Jungwirth was driving, and Hurd was in the front passenger seat.
An officer spotted two men who later turned out to be Jungwirth and Hurd in a residential area near the train tracks south of the fairgrounds. The two were sitting on a retaining wall near Taylor Ave. and Tatum St. waiting for a ride. The officer captured images of the pair with his body-worn camera before they left in the rideshare car.
“The clothing the men wore at the time they got into the rideshare did not match the clothing worn by the robbers,” according to the criminal complaints.
Hurd was booked into the Ramsey County jail on Monday afternoon, according to jail records. In a Facebook post, Sheriff Bob Fletcher said that Jungwirth, the alleged gunman, was arrested Wednesday morning at a house in Centerville, Minn., where he was found hiding under a staircase.
Jungwirth has prior convictions for burglary and credit card fraud, and at the time of the holdups, he’d been awaiting sentencing on a felony charge of fleeing police in a motor vehicle.
The Sunday morning manhunt prompted the Ramsey County Emergency Communications Center to send a public safety alert at 10:21 a.m. Sunday to cell phone users in the fairgrounds to notify them that the Canfield St. and transit hub gates were closed and to avoid the area around Como Ave.
At 11:36 a.m., the ECC sent an “all clear” message. The county said that this alert was intended only for cell phone users in the same geographic area, but it was mistakenly sent to all phone subscribers in Ramsey County.
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