Two arrested in connection to armed robbery at Fayette County gas station

FAYETTE COUNTY, Ga. - Two men were arrested in connection to a violent armed robbery at a QuikTrip in Fayette County 

Store surveillance video caught 21-year-old Patrick Bowman and 19-year-old Ra’quan Hurst, Sheriff Barry Babb said. Both have been charged with armed robbery.

The men are accused of robbing at gunpoint the QuikTrip on Highway 85 in Fayetteville at 3 a.m. on July 7. 

Sheriff Babb said the two men walked into the QT in the heat of July with hoodies tightly cinched around ski masks and were in the store for several minutes before they put a gun in the clerk’s face. The sheriff worries that society has become desensitized to masks, because there was a time, that when someone wearing a ski mask and entering a store in July did not raise an alarm to either the clerk or the patrons.

"This being July, and it makes you think, it’s a little like the Twilight Zone when you watch the surveillance video and you see somebody that obviously, you know with the heat that we have here in July in Georgia, that they’re that cinched up. Maybe people are getting used to this," Sheriff Babb said.

The sheriff said he and others in law enforcement want tougher sentences for armed robbery. He said often in court gun charges are not tacked on to a sentence but run concurrently with other charges.

"But what we see a lot of times, the vast majority of times is when they’re sentenced, the weapon’s charge is just concurrent, so it’s the same amount of time that they get for stealing the auto or doing the armed robbery. It needs to be consecutive," the sheriff said.

The sheriff said both Jonesboro men were captured within 12 hours of the robbery.

He praised the quality of the QT surveillance cameras and the hard work of detectives.

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