Man arrested after he robbed gas station a 2nd time, sheriff says
TAYLORSVILLE, Ind. (WISH) — A 25-year-old Columbus man who pleaded guilty to the burglary of a gas station in 2020 was arrested Wednesday after, police say, he burglarized the same place a second time.
Kobe Harmeson on Wednesday afternoon was in jail in Columbus on a 48-hour hold, Sgt. Dane Duke of the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Office says.
Deputies just before 6:25 a.m. Wednesday received a report of a robbery at the Shell gas station at 11700 N. U.S 31. That’s just west of the Edinburgh Premium Outlets off I-65 at Taylorsville.
Investigators think Harmeson entered the gas station wearing a mask. He told people at the gas station that he had a weapon in his coat pocket.
Surveillance cameras captured Harmeson leave “in a vehicle that had easily identifiable characteristics,” the sergeant said in a news release.
Less than a half-hour after the robbery, Sheriff’s Lt. Andrew Dougan found the vehicle parked in front of a home in the Tannehill Pointe Mobile Home Park, which is less than a mile west of the crime scene. Harmeson was found in the home and taken into custody on a preliminary robbery charge.
Online records show, after he pleaded guilty to the 2020 robbery, that Harmeson in February 2021 was given a suspended sentence in Bartholomew Circuit Court and served no additional jail time beyond three days he’d served earlier. The judge also put Harmeson on probation for two years, and required him to do community service, carry no firearms, obtain a driver’s license, undergo a mental health examination, and obtain a high school diploma or General Educational Development diploma.
Harmeson in January 2022 admitted in court that he’d violated the terms of his probation, although online records don’t provide any details. In February 2022, Harmeson was placed into Community Corrections, a sentencing alternative to incarceration that supervises criminal offenders in the community, rather than in a correctional facility. His probation also was extended for six months.
In September 2022, Harmeson again admitted to violating the terms of his probation, and he was ordered to nearly two years in jail, which had been the original sentence that was suspended in February 2021.
