Man sentenced for Dollar Store robbery

By Laurie Swenson

Pioneer Staff Writer

      A Red Lake man who committed an armed robbery of the Dollar Store in the Paul Bunyan Mall was sentenced Monday in Beltrami County District Court for felony first-degree robbery.

      James Cheyenne Lussier, 30, was sentenced to 64 months in prison. He must also pay $441 in restitution.

      At 6:15 p.m. Aug. 17, Lussier robbed the Dollar Store in the Paul Bunyan Mall. He told the clerk he had a gun, lifting his T-shirt and showing the butt of an automatic pistol that was tucked in his pants. He asked the clerk for a bag and told her to open the register and not make a scene or push any buttons.

      After the clerk opened the register, Lussier grabbed the currency out of the sections in the cash drawer. He again told the clerk not to press any buttons and that she would be fine. He then walked out of the store and jogged toward the west end of the mall, toward K-mart.

      The clerk immediately called 911 and alerted mall personnel. Bemidji police and Beltrami County deputies immediately responded to the west area of the mall. A Beltrami County sergeant was approached by a man who said he had been outside the mall when he saw a Native American man run out of the K-mart entrance and sprint up the hill toward the rear parking lot of the church next door. He said the man was wearing a light blue T-shirt.

      The sergeant and his K-9 partner found a light blue T-shirt hidden beneath a tarp and a fence next to the church. The shirt was taken into evidence and submitted to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Lab for DNA analysis.

      Over the next two days, Bemidji Police Department investigators attempted two photo lineups of six individuals having similar physical characteristics to the robber described by the Dollar Store clerk, who said that none of the men in the photo arrays was the man who had robbed the store.

      About 10 days later, Bemidji detectives received a tip from a citizen that the robbery may have been perpetrated by Lussier. A check of law enforcement records revealed that Lussier was a convicted felon. His physical description matched the characteristics of the robber as described by the clerk. Detectives assembled a third photo array and the clerk selected Lussier as the robber.

      Because Lussier was a convicted felon, a sample of his DNA was on file in the convicted offender DNA database maintained by the BCA. The BCA lab analyzed the DNA on the T-shirt and said it matched Lussier’s DNA.