UPDATE: During the course of the investigation, the images from the store’s video were shown to numerous citizens, and 41-year-old James Franklin Cloer III became a suspect.

Detectives obtained a search warrant for a residence at 170 Swimmers Lane. Detectives  found the clothes seen in the video from the robbery, and identified Cloer as the offender.

Cloer has a lengthy criminal history that includes armed robbery and kidnapping.

Cloer was arrested and charged with common law lobbery.  He was placed in the Rowan County Detention Center under a $75,000 secured bond. The investigation continues and additional arrests are anticipated.

 

By Shavonne Walker

shavonne.walker@salisburypost.com

Rowan authorities are looking for a man who took a cash register from a Bringle Ferry Road store after he told the clerk he’d been shortchanged earlier the same day.

The man walked into Jack’s Grocery, 3785 Bringle Ferry Road, on Tuesday around 6:30 p.m. He told the clerk he’d been in the store earlier the same day and claimed the clerk didn’t give him all of his money. The clerk gave the man the owner’s name and office number and explained he’d have to contact the owner the next day to discuss possible reimbursement, said Sheriff’s Capt. John Sifford.

The man left the store, but returned about 30 minutes later, approached the counter and violently grabbed the cash register. He ripped the register from its position on the counter and left with the register in his hand.

He got into the passenger’s side of a silver colored, two-door vehicle, believed to be a late-1990s Honda Civic. The vehicle left in an unknown direction of travel, Sifford said.

The man is described as a white male, heavy build, between 30 and 40 years old, with a full beard and medium-length brown hair. He was wearing a light-colored denim dress shirt, blue jeans, boots, and a green-and-white baseball cap.

Sifford said the clerk believed the man had been a customer in the store before this incident.

The register was valued at $350, and $500 was taken from the register.

Anyone with information about the robbery is asked to contact the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office at 704-216-8700 or Salisbury-Rowan Crime Stoppers at 1-866-639-5245.

The Rowan County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigative Division is investigating.