A man with ties to Northwest Indiana was arrested in Oklahoma in connection with a string of armed robberies, including two in Lake County, U.S. Attorney David Capp said Thursday at a press conference.
James Hunley, 50, previously known to be of Cedar Lake, Demotte and Bremen, faces four charges of committing an armed robbery affecting interstate commerce, known as a Hobbs Act robbery.
Capp said that Hunley first struck the Dollar General at 21 N. Main St., in Crown Point, on March 7. Three days later on March 11, he robbed the Dollar General at 2015 N. Michigan St. in Plymouth and then the Dollar General at 611 E. Talmer Ave. in North Judson on March 13. The spree ended a week after it began, Capp said, on March 14, with the armed robbery of the Walgreens at 13242 Wicker Ave., Cedar Lake. Capp said the total amount Hunley is expected of stealing is about $1,000 to $1,500. No one was injured in any of the robberies.
According to a probable cause affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court in Hammond, a man, later identified as Hunley, entered the Cedar Lake Walgreens at 3 p.m. wearing a black hoodie, a white hat, sunglasses and grey pants. He initially asked a clerk for directions but then placed a yellow bag on the counter, demanding money, according to the affidavit. He added that “time was running out” and that he had a gun, although it’s not clear if he showed a weapon.
The affidavit says that a day later an unidentified person approached investigators to say he had seen images from surveillance videos of the robbery and that the suspect was Hunley, who had lived with the man for a month.
Investigators learned that the Walgreens robber matched the description of the robber at the Dollar General in Plymouth, including the white hat and black hoodie, and a second person also identified Hunley from the surveillance images at that Dollar General, according to the affidavit.
Capp said he couldn’t provide details on how investigators tied Hunley to all four robberies but said that FBI agents tracked Hunley to a small town in Oklahoma just east of Tulsa and arrested him on March 17. He is now in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service and is expected to be transferred to Indiana within a week or two, Capp said.
Although Hunley has been arrested, Capp said his office is still seeking information on him and any possible associates. Anyone with information is asked to call a confidential FBI line at 317-595-4000.
This marks the second announcement of Hobbs Act charges by Capp’s office in the past month, and he stressed Thursday that he intends to continue to pursue them.
“We are not going to tolerate these armed robberies in our communities,” he said.
Capp thanked the various law enforcement groups involved, including Cedar Lake and Crown Point police and Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter, for their cooperation in the case.
Carter said that this case is a good example of how working with the federal attorneys can benefit everyone, noting that for the state prosecutors to go after Hunley, they would have to wait as each county charged and tried him.
Getting him to Indiana will also take less time, Carter said, as state officials would have to file for his extradition, a process that can take months.
“It’s absolutely what the Hobbs Act should be used for,” he said.
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Jay Abbott, special agent in charge of the FBI office in Indianapolis, also praised the teamwork, saying agents were able to quickly arrest Hunley because of it.
“The community no longer has to be worried,” he said.
Capp said that once Hunley is transferred to Indiana, his attorneys will seek to have him held without bond.