News Analysis
It was just after midnight closing time, no patrons were left in Mulligan’s Beach House restaurant, but the main south door facing Sexton Plaza was still unlocked. That’s when the tall Black male clad in black, who minutes before had asked a nearby hotel security guard for directions to the eatery, entered.
Inside, he walked straight to the kitchen, avoiding three workers that were cleaning up, maneuvered his way around a large cart full of trash bags, and made his way to the cash office hidden in the back, where the manager on duty was adding up the night’s receipts. The door to the cash office – normally closed during cash counting – was open.
The man – wearing a mask and armed with a grayish gun – walked in, pointed the gun at the woman manager’s head, and said: “Give me all your money” as he closed the door with his other hand.
None of the other employees still working that night had seen him. Not the bartender washing dishes behind the bar. Not the employee cleaning the kitchen with headphones on as he listened to music. Not the busboy finishing up his closing duties, preparing to clock out.
The robber, after roughing up the manager and tying her up, successfully made off with nearly $5,000. More than two weeks later, he was still at large.
It had been 14 years since two Ocean Drive jewelry stores were robbed in broad daylight – one a snatch-and-run, the other by a team armed with a taser. The Mulligan’s robbery was the first on the island in recent memory to involve a handgun.
“Detectives have leads in the case and obtained information on a possible suspect, but we cannot release further details since the investigation remains active,” Vero Beach Police Public Information Officer Kelsea Callahan said.
But police body-camera footage obtained by Vero Beach 32963 suggests the circumstances of this latest crime were bizarre, to say the least.
The first contact with the robber apparently came shortly before midnight, when a man wandering in-between the buildings of the adjacent Holiday Inn complex stumbled upon a security guard, and asked the guard how to get to Mulligan’s.
The guard, who gave him directions, said he could not make out the man’s face, but that he matched the robber’s description – Black male, roughly 6 feet tall, dressed in black.
Subsequent outdoor surveillance video from the Holiday Inn and neighboring buildings then showed the tall man – now wearing a black hoodie – talking on his cellphone as he casually walked over to Mulligan’s and strolled in the unlocked door, not looking at all wary that he’d be seen.
Inside, the employees cleaning up all told police they had not seen him come in, despite the fact that the entrance door – as captured on police body cam footage – makes a distinct metal-on-metal sound when it closes.
So the man, who apparently needed directions to find Mulligan’s, once inside made his way through the eatery to the cash office with no problem, walked through the open cash room door and allegedly pointed his gun at the manager.
“He must have known …” the manager said about her nightly routine of counting all the cash at closing time. She said the door to the office is normally closed when she’s counting. “I usually don’t leave it open,” she told officers.
The gunman told the manager to stuff the bills in his fanny pack of sorts, but the $4,934 wouldn’t fit and kept spilling out onto the office floor. He then grabbed a plastic Publix bag that contained a bowl of food and told her to put the overflow cash in the bag. She hastily complied, saying the robber was getting impatient.
An officer examining the scene noted “There’s not one dollar bill on the floor,” thinking it was strange for the robber to wait while the manager picked up every last one-dollar bill.
Once the cash was secured, the gunman tied the manager’s hands and feet with white shoelaces he’d brought with him. He also stole her $500 Apple watch.
While all this was happening, the busboy, who needed the manager to clock him out so he could leave, banged on the door repeatedly. The manager said the robber told her “he’d blow my brains out” if she responded.
The robber then slipped out of the cash office, walked back through the kitchen and out the front door, which was apparently still unlocked.
The employees found their manager tied up on the floor, screaming for help.
The officer writing down the statements asked the manager if the robber had an accent or if she recognized his voice as being that of a current or former employee. She said no, but that she’d only worked there since November. And he had no accent, she said. He sounded like a local “from the hood.”
Though the employees were interviewed by police one by one, they had all hung out together, discussing the night’s events, before their individual statements were taken.
The Vero Beach police officers, who responded to the call and listened to the employees’ and the manager’s accounts of what happened, appeared to be somewhat in disbelief.
Though a monitor showed four different camera angles around the restaurant, the head manager – who police had come to the scene – said the camera inside the cash office had not worked since February, so there’ was no video of the robbery itself.
“This is sketchy. Very sketchy,” the sergeant on-duty said after observing the employees, hearing the manager’s account and taking in the whole scene. She also could not help but notice the grimy, greasy kitchen, informing the detective and crime scene technician who were on their way to the restaurant, “Don’t wear any kind of good shoes.”
Vero police officers, assisted by Indian River County Sheriff’s deputies, arrived within minutes, fanning out to search the restaurant and hotel grounds, the nearby resort and even the surrounding Central Beach neighborhood.
A K-9 officer also scoured Mulligan’s parking lot and found no suspect – only clothing he’d ditched as he took flight.
Three different cameras showed the robber fleeing on foot, sans hoodie, in a light-colored T-shirt and black pants, carrying what appeared to be a black bag through the north parking lot of the hotel just minutes before police cars descend on the area, then heading east, right past the front door of The Boiler on Ocean Drive.
“This kid’s gone,” one officer commented to his colleagues before getting in his squad car to search the oceanfront farther north.
It’s apparent the robber knew exactly where to go inside Mulligan’s – even if he needed to ask directions to get there. Plus he knew the opportune time to show up at closing on a Saturday night. Two doors were unlocked that should have been secured. Nobody cleaning up saw anything. And an off-duty employee outside the building was sound asleep.
Could so many things coincidentally go wrong on the same night?
Photos by Joshua Kodis
