THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 28, 1994 TAG: 9407280541
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SARAH HUNTLEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
As Emporia taxi dispatcher Rebecca Taylor hung up the phone shortly after 7:15 a.m. Wednesday, she was horrified. She thought about the call from a Sussex County sheriff's lieutenant, and she thought about Joyce Wyche, the cabdriver she'd just sent out to pick up two men.
Then she panicked.
``Boy, I just went off. I kept thinking, `Oh, my God. It was a woman I'd sent to get those guys,' '' she said. ``You never know what will happen.''
She turned to co-worker Briggette Tyler and told her police suspected the two passengers in Wyche's cab were armed robbers from North Carolina.
Within seconds, Tyler had devised a radio message that would get Wyche safely back to Veteran's Taxicab Co. without tipping off her passengers, who had called from a church in Jarratt, north of Emporia.
``I told Joyce there were wires sticking out of her tires and she had better get a jack,'' Tyler said, stressing that the cab should swing by the home office before she drove her fares to Roanoke Rapids, N.C., 22 miles away.
``I always think quick to get out of trouble,'' Tyler explained. ``Our driver's life was in danger. I didn't want her to be taken hostage.''
The plan worked. When Wyche pulled into the taxi stand, police officers swarmed the vehicle and apprehended Jamie Lamont Weaver, 20, and Lonzy Barber, 24, both of Garysburg, N.C.
Police said Weaver, Barber and two other men waved a gun at a woman in the parking lot of a Roanoke Rapids Holiday Inn as she unloaded luggage from her blue 1994 Explorer at 12:36 a.m.
When the victim, Cynthia Figueroa of Quincy, Fla., told the men her van keys were in her hotel room, the robbers pushed her inside. Figueroa's three young children looked on as she handed over her keys. The woman phoned police after the men sped away in her vehicle.
Roanoke Rapids officers caught up with the Explorer as it traveled along I-95. After crossing the state line, the vehicle veered off the interstate onto U.S. Route 301.
The fugitives abandoned the Explorer outside a Virginia State Police office in Emporia and fled through adjacent woods, a state police spokeswoman said. Calling for an all-out manhunt, troopers brought in tracking dogs. The search yielded a .32-caliber revolver with the serial number scratched off.
``There's no question that without the cab company's cooperation, we wouldn't have caught these people,'' Sussex Sheriff Stuart Kitchen said. ``The message about the tires probably averted a dangerous situation. There was quick-thinking on the part of the cab company, the lieutenant and the dispatchers.''
Weaver and Barber were charged with grand larceny felony and obstruction of justice. Police were still searching for the other two fugitives. ILLUSTRATION: STAFF MAP
HOW IT HAPPENED
1 Four men hold up a female guest at Holiday Inn and flee in her
van. Police pursue the van along I-95 northbound.
2 The men ditch the van and flee on foot.
3 Two of the fugitives call a cab and are picked up by driver Joyce
Wyche. Dispatcher makes up a story about Wyche's cab having bad
tires and asks her to stop by home base for a jack.
4 Cab pulls into taxi stand and police nab suspects.
MICHAEL KESTNER/Staff
Emporia cab dispatchers Briggette Tyler, left, and Rebecca Taylor
helped catch two robbery suspects from North Carolina who were
passengers in a taxi driven by Joyce Wyche.
KEYWORDS: GRAND LARCENY FELONY FUGITIVES ROBBERY by CNB