A security guard just fired from a downtown Minneapolis nightspot tied up a manager at gunpoint, knocked her unconscious and made off with $24,000 from the office safe, according to federal authorities.
Hakeem A. Coles, 24, of St. Louis Park, was indicted in federal court in Minneapolis last week in connection with the Aug. 17 robbery of Cowboy Jack's in the Warehouse District.
Coles is currently jailed in New Orleans following his arrest in mid-September on charges in Jefferson Parish of illegal weapons possession, having fraudulent identification, illicit drug possession and resisting an officer.
At the time of the Cowboy Jack's robbery, Coles had a robbery from 2012 on his record and was under supervised probation for stabbing, punching and robbing a man in north Minneapolis during a marijuana purchase in February 2018.
Coles pleaded guilty, and Hennepin County Judge Regina Chu set aside a nearly six-year sentence in August 2018 that would have had him in prison until late 2021. Instead, Chu sentenced Coles to a year in the county workhouse and three years' probation. With credit for time in jail, he was freed this spring.
That punishment was a prosecution-recommended downward departure from state sentencing guidelines. Chu agreed that Coles was agreeable to treatment and had accepted responsibility for the crime.
According to the criminal complaint filed in the latest allegations against Coles:
The general manager unlocked the door about 9:10 on a Saturday morning for Coles, who said he wanted to retrieve his cellphone that he left the night before.