One of two suspects in 4-year-old theft case arrested

Oakwood Police have been looking for two shoplifting for four years and now, they say, they are in halfway home.

Detective Sgt. Stewart Webb said Wednesday it all started April 4, 2020, when Walmart officials notified Oakwood Police that someone had pushed items out one of the fire doors without paying for them.

Security video showed two men had gone to the electronics department, selected three all-in-one computers and placed them into the cart. “The subjects then headed to the front of the store and pushed them out through the fire door and then got into a black Hyundai and drove away,” Sgt. Webb said.

Nine days later, police received a lookout in reference to three suspects being arrested for shoplifting at Wal Mart on Ashford Dunwoody Road in Atlanta. “The suspects had pushed out eight flat screen TVs,” Webb said.  He added they were driving a car that matched the one used in the Oakwood theft.

Detectives up with the Dunwoody Police Department and confirmed the identity of the two suspects related to the Oakwood investigation and warrants were obtained for Desmond Stovall, 21, Atlanta, and Michael Burse, 20, Atlanta and now, four years later, Burse in is custody but Stovall remains at large.

Details of Buse’s eventual arrest were not immediately known but the Hall County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) Protective Transport Unit picked him up at the Gilmer County Jail in Ellijay and returned him to Gainesville.