A convicted felon freed from prison three years ago and out on bail on a pending rape charge in Maryland was arrested Friday and is being investigated in a series of armed robberies of businesses in the District and Prince George’s County, according to court documents.
D.C. police said David Flowers, 48, of Northeast Washington was charged with six counts of armed robbery and two counts of attempted armed robbery.
An arrest affidavit filed in court says that “through witness descriptions and video footage,” the D.C. robberies, as well as up to a dozen in Maryland, appear to have been committed by the same man. The cases are being investigated by D.C. and Prince George’s police, as well as the FBI. Flowers has not been charged in the robberies in Prince George’s.
At the time of the holdups, Flowers was free on $100,000 bond as he awaited trial on charges including first-degree rape, said John Erzen, a spokesman for the Prince George’s state’s attorney’s office. Erzen said prosecutors had argued to keep Flowers detained pending trial, but a county judge allowed his release.
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Erzen said authorities used DNA collected at a robbery scene in 2011 to link Flowers to the rape. Court charging documents accuse Flowers of holding up a woman who was waiting at a bus stop in Suitland, putting a knife to her throat and forcing her into the woods, where she was sexually assaulted.
Flowers has at least two felony convictions in the District dating to the 1990s, but details could not immediately be ascertained. In 2001, a D.C. federal court jury found Flowers guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Records show he was released in early 2011. Flowers’s attorney in the rape case, Monica “Nikki” Lotze, declined to comment Monday.
Authorities said the robberies in both jurisdictions began in February 2014. Those in the District occurred in Southeast and Southwest.
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The arrest affidavit said detectives got a break Dec. 26, when a CVS pharmacy was robbed in Capitol Heights by a man armed with a silver-and-black handgun. Police said he took $9,000, along with a tracking device hidden in a hollowed out stack of money. Police tracked the getaway vehicle to the 500 block of 57th Street NE.
A traffic-control camera along the path the vehicle followed captured the image of a gold Buick Lacrosse, a car that was described by witnesses in other holdups, court papers say.
Authorities said a car matching the same description was used Thursday by a man wearing a black ski mask who tried to rob a KFC restaurant on Coventry Way in Clinton. Police said the man ran out of the restaurant when the manager told him there was no money there.
The next day, police said, a man tried to rob a Popeyes restaurant on Naylor Road in Southeast. Police said that man also left without any money and that he was seen in a gold Buick. Police pulled over a Buick a short distance away. They said court documents show that a detective saw clothes on the back seat similar to those worn by the gunman in several holdups.
Flowers, who was in the car, was arrested, police said.
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