Deputies searching for man caught on video during armed robbery firing shots into convenience store
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HAMMOND - A man who was shot to death after he forced his way into a home over the weekend was caught on video shooting up a convenience store just hours earlier.
No one was hurt, but surveillance video showed a masked man firing several shots inside the store — a gas station at the corner of Happywoods Road and Old Baton Rouge Highway — around 8 p.m. Saturday. An employee who was working at the time heard gunfire outside the store and ran away before the gunman walked through the door.
Once inside, video showed the robber randomly firing a shot at the counter and clumsily shooting the register to break it open. While cleaning out the cash, he appears to accidently fire off the gun again.
While deputies released the video Wednesday hoping to identify the gunman, they soon realized that the shooter was Robert Rheams, who was shot to death just hours after he committed the robbery.
Investigators believe Rheams tried to carjack someone after the gas station heist and then, around 5 a.m. Sunday, forced his way into a home on Klein Road while armed with a shovel and lug wrench.
During the home invasion, Chief Deputy Jimmy Travis told WBRZ that Rheams walked right past a sleeping child and confronted the homeowner in her bedroom, where the woman fatally shot him.
Chief Deputy Jimmy Travis said in a statement that Rheam's shooting, which came at the hands of a mother who was home with two kids at the time, appeared to be a case of "a homeowner exercising second amendment rights to protect herself and her children."