Va. Man Charged in Robbery of Waldorf Gas Station Clerk

A man from King George, Va., was arrested Friday in Waldorf on suspicion of robbing a gas station clerk at knifepoint and trying to use a public bus as his getaway vehicle.

Acting on a hunch, Charles County sheriff's officers stopped the bus and arrested 18-year-old James W. Briscoe when he tried to run out the emergency door. He was being held on $50,000 bond Tuesday and faced charges of armed robbery, theft and assault.

"While it is unusual that people would use public transportation to escape from a crime, it's not unheard of," said Diane Richardson, a spokeswoman for the Charles County Sheriff's Office.

Police said the robbery occurred about 9 p.m. at an Exxon station in the 3600 block of Crain Highway. Mohammad Farid Ul Islam, the station attendant, said Briscoe approached him, flashed a knife and demanded money.

"He put the knife in my belly and said, 'Open the drawer, give me money,' " Ul Islam said. "But he didn't hurt me."

Briscoe ran from the station after taking about $121, according to charging documents. Ul Islam called police and gave them a description of the suspect and told them which way he was headed, the documents say.

Realizing that the suspect had run toward the VanGO bus parking lot on Smallwood Drive, police stopped a group of buses, Richardson said. Briscoe ran out the emergency door and was arrested after a brief foot chase.

Briscoe told officers that he had been drinking and admitted using a knife to commit the robbery, according to charging documents.

In an interview, Briscoe's mother, Phylis Briscoe, said her son must have blacked out because he was unable to tell her what had happened. She said that he is learning disabled and that he had recently begun suffering from "blackouts" in which he became disoriented. She said he had been hospitalized twice in the past two months.

"James said the only thing he knows is he was drinking, and he was on his way to catch [the] VanGO," Phylis Briscoe said.