Police: Man robbed two stores hours apart

Police said the same robber who was hit with a machete at the Cavendish General Store on Monday held up the Irving gas station in North Springfield hours later.


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PHOTO BY ERIC FRANCIS Joshua Corliss, 33, of Chester, in court Wednesday afternoon, is the suspect in two separate armed robberies that took place Monday at the Cavendish General Store and later at a gas station in North Springfield. Published December 17, 2015 in the Rutland Herald Police: Man robbed two stores hours apart By ERIC FRANCIS CORRESPONDENT WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Police said the same robber who was hit with a machete at the Cavendish General Store on Monday held up the Irving gas station in North Springfield hours later. Joshua Corliss, 33, a long-time Chester resident who listed a North Springfield address when he was brought into White River Junction criminal court Wednesday, pleaded guilty to a felony count of assault and robbery with a weapon. He was taken back to the Springfield jail for lack of $50,000 bail. “The state anticipates that another, very similar, charge will be brought in relation to the Springfield case still under investigation within the next couple of days,” Deputy State’s Attorney Heidi Remick said during the arraignment. Lori Brand, a clerk at the Cavendish General Store, told police a man asked for a pack of cigarettes shortly before noon Monday. When she turned back to put the cigarettes on the counter, he pressed a knife against her neck and demanded she open the register, according to a Vermont State Police affidavit. Brand said she backed away from the counter screaming, “I’ll give you what you want!”as the robber lunged at her with the knife. Hearing his wife cry out, Theodore Brand rushed in from the back of the store with a machete and got in front of her, telling the robber to get out, the affidavit said. Theodore Brand struck the robber in the arm with the machete and the knife fell to the floor, police said. The man grabbed the cash register and staggered out the door with Theodore Brand in pursuit, police said. He dropped the register in the parking lot and grabbed handfuls of $10 and $20 bills that spilled out, the affidavit said. The robber lost his black baseball cap with a Puma logo, which Brand seized. The robber ran behind the nearby post office and drove away in an older “gold-ish” Volkswagen Jetta, said witnesses who also got most of the license plate number. Police said they were able to use that information to trace the car to a woman who turned out to be Corliss’ former girlfriend. Detectives also found the robber had dropped a hotel key card with a room number on the floor of the store. Police said the ex-girlfriend was living there, and he had borrowed her car. A surveillance video at the Chester-Andover Elementary School showed Corliss dropping off his ex-girlfriend’s child there, police said. He appeared to be wearing the Puma cap lost by the robber at the store, police said. The next day, police said, Corliss called and said he was in Chester and planned to turn himself in. Minutes later he was arrested by Chester Police. Corliss called a lawyer from the State Police barracks in Rockingham and declined to be interviewed, but police said they photographed a fresh 2-inch cut on his forearm. Corliss’ ex-girlfriend told police he borrowed her car again later Monday, and investigators said it was at the time of the robbery of the Irving gas station in North Springfield. Video at the gas station showed the robber there was wearing the same blue and white jacket Corliss was seen wearing earlier outside the Chester-Andover Elementary School, police said. Corliss’ criminal history includes five convictions for drunken driving and several car chases with police, including a 2010 pursuit during which a Windsor County deputy sheriff was nearly run down. Before Monday’s robberies, he had been free on conditions after pleading innocent earlier this year to violating an abuse-prevention order. In those cases, he is accused of having contact with the same ex-girlfriend whose car he allegedly twice used in robberies Monday.