A Pinellas Park woman was arrested Dec. 27 in connection with two Walmart robberies in Gainesville.
Gainesville Police officers arrested Regina Mary Rossi, 52, and charged her with two counts of robbery with a firearm, which is a first-degree felony, according to a GPD arrest report.
At about 3 p.m. on Black Friday, Rossi walked into the Walmart on Northeast 12th Avenue wearing a snow cap with a black wig.
Once inside, she walked around the store and put toys and a poinsettia into her cart. Then she approached a garden center cashier, according to the report.
Rossi pulled out a black handgun, pointed it at the cashier and ordered the woman to fill a bag with money.
When the cashier said she couldn’t open the register, Rossi removed a toy jewelry box from her cart and asked the woman to ring up the item and give her cash.
Rossi stole more than $700 from the cashier and fled the store, according to the report.
GPD officers responded to the scene, where a K-9 unit officer and a police dog tracked Rossi’s trail.
Police later found a shirt, blue jeans, cap and boots that Rossi wore during the time of the robbery, according to the report.
A detective from Gainesville Police’s Forensic Crime Unit found Rossi’s fingerprints on the toys, the counter inside the store and on the cart she used.
On Dec. 26, Rossi walked into the Walmart on Northwest 13th Street. This time, she did not wear a disguise.
She walked around the store again, putting toys into her cart.
Rossi approached a cashier in the store’s garden center.
As the cashier rang up and bagged the toys in Rossi’s cart, Rossi told the clerk she had a gun in her purse and demanded all money in the register, according to the report.
The cashier gave Rossi the cash and the bag of toys. Rossi later fled from the store westbound toward Bank of America, in the 2700 block of Northwest 13th Street.
Police did not say how much money was stolen.
The store’s surveillance cameras captured Rossi robbing the clerk and fleeing from the scene.
The next day, using the fingerprint evidence, detectives obtained a photograph of Rossi, according to the report.
During an interview, investigators presented a photo of Rossi to one of the Walmart cashiers, who identified Rossi as the alleged robber.
Later that evening, officers located and arrested Rossi outside her sister’s house in Fort White.
During questioning, Rossi told police she robbed the Walmart stores because she lost custody of her son five years ago and that her house was being foreclosed on, according to the report.
After her arrest, officers booked Rossi into the Columbia County Jail. She was later taken to the the Alachua County Jail.
Meanwhile, Rossi’s car was towed to University Towing in Gainesville.
Inside the car, police found a black Taurus .38-caliber handgun as well as ammunition. They also found a bag of toys, a receipt and sunglasses Rossi wore during one of the robberies.
Officers booked Rossi into the Alachua County Jail at 11:44 a.m. Dec. 30. As of Sunday night, she remained in custody with a $200,000 bond.
Gainesville Police’s crime analysts sent out Rossi’s information to other law enforcement agencies in the state to see if she could be connected to any other unsolved robberies, said GPD spokesman Ben Tobias.
As of Friday, he said, Rossi may be connected to at least two other robberies, one of which happened in Pinellas County.
Tobias could not give any more details on the other incidents.
Contact Kathryn Varn at kvarn@alligator.org.
