A white minivan and a Red Box DVD rental led police to their prime suspects in the brutal Uptown robbery cases.
Those details were made public on Tuesday in a newly filed search warrant in Hennepin County District Court. It provides a glimpse of the police investigation that led to Michael Alex Dean Boyce, 19, and Joseph Frederick Tucker, 21, the two men now charged with robbery and assault in a May 11 attack that left a 61-year-old man with broken bones in his face.
The string of attacks on pedestrians in the Uptown area last month prompted a warning from the Minneapolis police and set the neighborhood on edge. The robberies were remarkably similar, occurring in the same neighborhood at the same time of night, usually targeting a pedestrian or two. Many of the victims were punched from behind and beaten even after they had surrendered their belongings.
One of the victims told the Star Tribune that he chased after the men once they left him on the sidewalk and saw them drive away in a white minivan.
A few days later, officers stopped a white minivan in the area of the robberies, according to the search warrant. Inside they found Boyce and Tucker. The patrol officers noted that Boyce and Tucker matched descriptions from the robbery victims. They also took down their addresses, one on the 3100 block of Grand Avenue S. and the other on the 3700 block of Stevens Avenue S.
Minneapolis police Lt. Mike Fossum, meanwhile, obtained video footage from a Red Box DVD rental machine where a credit card stolen from one of the victims had been used. The video shows two men renting movies; the men drove up in a dark-colored sedan with one gray door and a window covered in duct tape. Fossum reported in the warrant that he drove to the Grand Avenue S. address and found a sedan with the same characteristics that was registered to Boyce's mother.
Matt McKinney • 612-217-1747
