By Dan Nienaber

Mankato Free Press

Two suspects in a nine-hour standoff in Austin last Tuesday — after an alleged carjacking in Mankato — are also suspects in a convenience store robbery Monday morning in Mankato.

That information surfaced after Thomas Kendricks III, 23, and Jamie Cornelius Hawthorne, 17, were both charged Friday in Blue Earth County District Court for allegedly carjacking a woman at gunpoint outside an apartment on the 200 block of Briargate Road in Mankato at about 12:30 a.m. Tuesday. The Quick Mart robbery was reported at about 2:45 a.m. Monday and handled by the Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Department.

Hawthorne was arrested during the nine-hour police standoff in Austin after the woman’s stolen Nissan Sentra was found outside a home where Kendricks’ aunt and uncle live. Kendricks also had been at the house but fled after seeing police outside, the criminal complaint said. Kendricks remains at large and police were told he had shaved his head, mustache and beard before arriving in Austin, so he doesn’t look the same as he does in a photograph taken by the Department of Corrections, said Austin Capt. David McKichan.

Investigators with the Sheriff’s Department didn’t focus on Kendricks and Hawthorne as suspects in the Quick Mart robbery until after the carjacking. When that link was made, the two suspects were identified in a surveillance video of the robbery by a teenage girl who was also arrested with Hawthorne in Austin, the criminal complaints said.

A man working at the Quick Mart called 911 to report he had been robbed by two males, including one who had apparently threatened him with a semi-automatic handgun.

He said he was told to get on the ground while the man without a gun walked behind the counter, emptied cash registers and took nine packs of Camel cigarettes that he put into a white grocery bag. The men then took the store phone and the employee’s cell phone before running out of the store and toward Highway 169.

Both men were wearing multi-colored bandanas that covered their faces, the clerk reported. Law enforcement officers were able to follow their tracks to an area behind a masonry building, then along Matthews Street where the suspects had apparently gotten into a vehicle with wide tires. The phone from the store was found on the roof of a nearby garage.

Mankato police officers were dispatched to the Briargate Road carjacking that was reported at about 12:30 Tuesday. The victim said she was visiting friends and had already started her car so it could warm up before she left their apartment.

As she was leaving, one man followed her to her car before a second man appeared “out of nowhere” and asked her for directions to 1801 Monks Ave., the victim reported. She gave the man directions and was about to get into her car when she was blocked by the second man. He showed her a handgun and told her to run in a direction away from her friends’ apartment.

Investigators said they had information that made them suspect the car had been taken to Austin or a few other cities, so they asked officers in those cities to look for the car. It was found outside Kendricks’ uncle’s residence sometime before 9 a.m. Tuesday.

After Kendricks saw the police officers outside the residence in Austin, his aunt, Brandy Smith, walked outside and talked to law enforcement officers who had surrounded the house. She told the officers Kendricks, Hawthorne and the Cleveland girl had arrived at her house at about 4 a.m. that day. She also said she knew nothing about either robbery.

Kendricks, who was released from prison in June after serving a sentence for a Mankato bank-drop robbery, also told Smith his probation officer was looking for him because police had found liquor at his residence, she reported. A warrant also had been issued for Hawthorne’s arrest Jan. 10 because he had violated his probation for a juvenile disorderly conduct case in Nicollet County by not attending school and leaving his mother’s North Mankato residence, court records said.

Kendricks walked into Smith’s room at about 8:50 a.m. Tuesday, woke her and told her there were police officers outside, she reported. She said that’s when she walked outside to talk to the officers. The standoff started at that point and continued until Hawthorne and the Cleveland girl walked out. A robot was used to search the house before officers went inside. Kendricks was not found.

The girl told investigators Kendricks and Hawthorne were driving the stolen car when they picked her up outside a Cleveland convenience store between 1 and 2 a.m. Tuesday. She said she didn’t know about the convenience store robbery, but said Kendricks and Hawthorne had large stacks of cash and packs of Camel cigarettes in a white bag.

A stack of $1 and $5 bills were found with the girl when she was taken into custody, investigators reported. One of the $1 bills, which had a large orange ink blot on it, was identified by the Quick Mart clerk as a bill he had taken from a customer the night of the robbery. The girl also was shown the surveillance video during the Austin interview and identified Kendricks and Hawthorne as the robbers at that time, the complaint said.

Hawthorne told investigators he had been coerced into participating in the robberies by Kendricks, who had the gun, the complaints said. That was a concern for Rich Hillesheim, the attorney who represented Hawthorne during a juvenile hearing Friday before Blue Earth County District Court Judge Kurt Johnson.

“He was not necessarily a willing participant and could have been coerced, which will have to be considered for a defense in this case,” Hillesheim said after the hearing.

A nationwide warrant has been issued for Kendricks’ arrest.

—Distributed by MCT Information Services