Police track down robbery suspect

Police said they found the man hiding in a bedroom in a Reel Avenue home.

YOUNGSTOWN — Police said a witness led officers to a house where a suspect fled after the robbery of the Family Dollar Store at 2708 Glenwood Ave.

Police were alerted to a robbery in progress at the South Side store around noon, but the suspect had fled before the first units arrived.

The store manger described the robber as wearing a black hoodie and a black coat and carrying a small handgun and said $133 was taken.

A man in a sport-utility vehicle stopped near the store told police that he saw the gunman run out of the store and head west on Indianola Avenue and then south onto Reel Avenue where he entered a house.

Police converged on that location, saw fresh tracks in the snow leading to a house in the 2700 block of Reel Avenue and set up a perimeter around the building, calling out to anyone inside to come out.

Police said two women left the house and informed officers that there was a man they didn’t know still inside.

Police approached the open front door, and a man fitting the description of the robber slammed the door shut and locked it from the inside.

Officers forced the door open and caught the man, identified as Willis A. Hendrix, 28, of West Indianola Avenue, in a back bedroom.

Police said that he admitted robbing the store and that officers found $88 in his pants pocket that he said came from the robbery. Police didn’t recover the gun, which Hendrix claimed to have thrown between two houses as he ran along Indianola.

Hendrix is charged with aggravated robbery and is in Mahoning County Jail pending arraignment.