March 11, 2013
GLASSBORO, N.J. – A Glassboro man was arrested Tuesday on a warrant for a 2011 armed robbery after a recent arrest proved to be the missing link in the case, police said.
Dequan Allen, 19, also known as Daquan, was charged with robbery, kidnapping and theft after his fingerprints from a recent arrest were found to match those pulled from evidence found in an unresolved armed robbery case dating back to over two years ago, police said.
Allen was arrested on Jan. 23, 2013 for an alleged robbery in which he and another man, Quashon Winchester, 20, who remains at large, stole a cell phone and $100 in cash from a man sitting in a vehicle off of South Academy Street, police said. Police Chief Alex Fanfarillo said the two told the man that they were carrying weapons during the robbery, however, investigation later proved that the threats were “a bluff on the part of the robbers” and no weapons were found. Allen was later charged with robbery, theft, terroristic threats and conspiracy for his role in the incident.
As Allen was being processed for the charges stemming from the January arrest, a delayed Automated Fingerprint Identification System hit found a positive match between Allen’s fingerprints and latent prints discovered on evidence collected from the scene of an unresolved 2011 armed robbery, police said.
According to the official police report from the incident, on Jan. 21, 2011 at around 8:30 p.m., a young man holding a black handgun snuck into the kitchen of the Crown Fried Chicken on East High Street, locked a female employee inside of the freezer and took an unspecified amount of cash. The man was seen fleeing from the scene with three additional suspects.
After some time went by, a customer heard the employee screaming and banging on the freezer door and set her free. The employee then called the police and described the suspect as approximately 5 feet 8 inches in height and between 16 and 19 years old, but no arrests were made in connection with the case until now.
Allen was turned over by police to the Gloucester County Jail. He was issued a no-bail warrant by Superior Court Judge Colleen Maier, police said. He is scheduled to appear before a judge at a date still to be determined.
Fanfarillo said that the case is being left open as the three additional suspects seen fleeing the Crown Fried Chicken on Jan. 21, 2011 are still at large, but he noted that there is little known about them and cases this old are hard to solve as it is.
