Corey Michael Roberts, 32, of Cedar Hill has been charged with a felony for allegedly using a BB gun to hold an employee at gunpoint and rob The Game Room in Cedar Hill, court records show.
He was charged with first-degree robbery, a class A felony punishable by 10 to 30 years or life in prison.
Roberts was arrested at about 4 p.m. May 22 near Dulin Creek in House Springs. He was being held on May 23 at the Jefferson County Jail in Hillsboro, the Sheriff’s Office reported.
According to the probable-cause statement in the case, at about 5 a.m. May 5, Roberts went to a back office at the arcade, 8106 S. Industrial Drive, which was open at the time. He reportedly pointed what was described as a silver pistol at an employee in the office and demanded money and then left with about $5,000 and ran into a wooded area west of the arcade.
Investigators found the pistol, which turned out to be a BB gun, and a “large sum” of money in the wooded area about two hours after the reported robbery. Detectives allegedly found one of Roberts’ fingerprints on the gun, according to the report.
The alleged robbery was captured on surveillance video, and the suspect was wearing gray Asics tennis shoes with blue lettering, the same kind of shoes a suspect was seen wearing in surveillance video from one of the arcade’s neighboring businesses four days earlier, the probable-cause statement said.
The Sheriff’s Office did not say where Roberts was arrested or how he was located.
Roberts already was facing a charge for possession of a controlled substance stemming from a Sheriff’s Office arrest in August 2022. He was charged in that case on April 12 with a class D felony punishable by up to seven years in prison, court documents show.
At the time of the August 2022 arrest, Roberts was on probation after pleading guilty in Jefferson County to felony possession following a March 2021 arrest. He pleaded guilty to that charge in March 2022 and was sentenced to seven years in prison, but the sentence was suspended and he was put on five years’ probation, according to court records.
He also pleaded guilty to forgery, a class D felony, in Franklin County stemming from a March 2018 incident in St. Clair and was sentenced to five years in prison, but that sentence was suspended and he was placed on five years’ probation, court documents show.