Court docs: Armed robber only made off with $1 bills

Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Devin Ewoldt

Is a wad of $1 bills worth the possibility of up to 16 years in prison?

If convicted of Level 3 felony armed robbery, a Miami County man is likely to have that thought on his mind a lot in the coming years.

Devin Ewoldt, 33, Bunker Hill, was formally charged Tuesday in the Sept. 29 robbery of the Greencastle Pizza King, one of three similar incidents across western Indiana in which he accused.

With the filing by Prosecutor Tim Bookwalter in Putnam Superior Court on Tuesday came some of the first public details in the one local incident in a string of crimes of which Ewoldt is accused.

According to the probable cause affidavit, a man, allegedly Ewoldt, walked into the Bloomington Street restaurant shortly after it opened at 4 p.m. that Saturday.

Unfortunately for the robber, the restaurant has plenty of dough at that time of day, just not the sort he was seeking.

He produced a note from his pocket that said, “If you want to live put all the money in the bag.” After an employee and the store manager had read the note, the suspect showed them the handgun tucked into the waistband of his shorts.

Unfazed, the manager informed the man they had just opened for business and it was not worth his time, ordering him to leave the restaurant.

The suspect allegedly ordered her to open the drawer. When she did, he reached across the counter and began grabbing ones.

As he was grabbing the ones, the manager told Greencastle Police officers she removed the fives — the only other denomination of currency in the till ­— so that the suspect could not get them.

After reviewing video of the incident, Det. Capt. Michael Collins noted that the manager even smacked the robber’s hand away when he grabbed at the fives.

She then told the robber to leave, which he did, fleeing down the alley south of Pizza King to where his car was parked. He then fled north on Bloomington Street.

Later that night, police from multiple agencies began to piece together a string of incidents, noting that a man wearing the exact same clothes robbed a Dollar General Store in Lebanon later in the day.

A suspect matching the same description had also robbed the Dollar General in Gosport five days earlier.

Working with police from Crawfordsville — where Ewoldt was wanted on two additional warrants — and Lebanon, Collins soon had confirmation that the man in the video footage was Ewoldt.

Presented with a photo line-up of six possible suspects, the Pizza King counter employee also picked Ewoldt’s picture.

Though police could initially not locate him, Ewoldt was taken into custody near New Market on Oct. 4 following a two-hour standoff with police.

He remains in custody at the Montgomery County Jail.

Ewoldt currently faces seven felony charges and two misdemeanors in three different counties:

• Putnam County: Level 3 felony armed robbery;

• Boone County: Level 3 felony armed robbery and Level 5 felony intimidation;

• Montgomery County: Level 5 felony driving after the forfeiture of license for life, Level 6 felony resisting law enforcement, Level 6 felony driving as a habitual traffic violator, Level 6 felony possession of methamphetamine and two counts of Class C misdemeanor possession of paraphernalia.

As of Tuesday no charges had yet been formally filed in Owen County related to the Gosport robbery.

No hearing dates have been set in Putnam Superior Court, but Ewoldt is likely to remain busy in Montgomery and Boone county courts.

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