Two recent incidents in Liberty Lake solved
Liberty Lake police tracked down suspects in two recent theft and forgery cases.
Last week, police arrested a suspect in connection with a four-month-old robbery investigation involving Liberty Lake’s Burger King, which recently closed.
In November, police received a call that the restaurant had been robbed by a white male claiming to have a gun.
Liberty Lake Police Chief Brian Asmus said officers were suspicious because the alleged victim, a Burger King employee, was behaving oddly.
“It was just too strange the way the events unfolded after we talked to the victim,” he said.
The employee identified a suspect on video surveillance tape, Asmus said, but refused to go look at a lineup. Also, police received a tip that the incident wasn’t a robbery, but rather an inside job.
Asmus said officers determined that the employee wasn’t held at gunpoint, but allegedly passed his cousin a deposit bag, containing $500 to $600.
Last Friday, Sgt. Ray Bourgeois and Officer Clint Gibson arrested the former employee, David Michael Inwood, 24, and his cousin, David Michael Whitman, 21, who had an outstanding warrant.
The suspects were booked into Spokane County Jail on second-degree theft charges.
Several weeks ago, Liberty Lake police filed charges against a woman who was incarcerated in Kootenai County on unrelated forgery charges.
The suspect allegedly used the identity of an inmate at Geiger Corrections Center to obtain and pass $600 in bogus checks at Liberty Lake’s Safeway and Albertsons stores.
Asmus said police retrieved video surveillance footage from Safeway and compared it with a Department of Licensing photograph of the owner of the driver’s license that was presented with the bad checks.
Officers found the woman named in the checks at Geiger, and she identified the person falsely claiming to be her.
Police filed additional forgery charges against Deborah Bergen, 38.
Asmus said a criminal stealing the identity of another criminal added a unique aspect to the case.