Charges filed for string of area heists

By Cleve Wiese

Published: June 25, 2008

Authorities have charged a Crimora man with robbing the Augusta County Cooperative Farm Bureau at knifepoint and an attempted robbery near Waynesboro in a string of heists stretching to Rockingham and Greene counties.
Brian Eugene Brubaker, 41, was already in custody at the Rockingham County Jail when the Augusta County Sheriff’s Department arrested him at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday. He was being held on charges he robbed a Harrisonburg tractor supply company.
Police say Brubaker wielded a knife June 13, threatening a farm bureau worker before making off with an undisclosed amount of cash from the Augusta County office off U.S. 250 in Staunton, police said.
A week earlier, Brubaker brandished an unidentified object wrapped in a towel at Ladd’s convenience store off Route 340 outside Waynesboro before fleeing empty-handed, according to police.
Eyewitnesses to that incident fingered Brubaker in a photo lineup, Augusta County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Glenn Hanger said.
Investigators with the Greene County Sheriff’s Office also have charged Brubaker in the June 17 knifepoint robberies of Bootville, Crawford Saddlery and the Food Lion at Forest Lakes.
“They were all perpetrated by the same individual, we feel certain,” Augusta County Sheriff Randy Fisher said.
Brubaker is being held at the Rockingham lockup pending a bond hearing.