Florida shootout ends ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ spree

The next sighting happened midday Wednesday when Fitzgerald and Brittany Harper entered Alvin’s Island in Destin about noon and walked around the store looking at items, said Okaloosa County sheriff’s spokeswoman Michele Nicholson.

“They were under no illusion”, Ian Gunnell told CNN affiliate WIAT on Friday.

Escambia County Sheriff’s Office in Florida said Blake Fitzgerald died and Brittany Nicole Harper was wounded after a police chase.

The girlfriend in the “modern-day Bonnie and Clyde” duo suspected of multiple kidnappings and robberies is being held on a bond worth more than $1 million.

A reward of up to $5,000 each is being offered for information leading directly to Fitzgerald’s and Harper’s arrest. Tonight’s chase possibly followed the robbery of a Famous Footwear shoe store on Davis Highway just south of I-10.

Sheriff Morgan would not say whether Fitzgerald fired any shots at officers.

The vehicle was found abandoned Thursday night in a Pensacola neighborhood.

After some tense moments, everyone settled down, Ian Gunnell told WIAT.

Authorities began chasing the couple, following them to nearby Pensacola Beach, before zigging and zagging though Pensacola and even going onto Interstate 10 a couple of times, Morgan said. “They were on the run, in trouble, needed somewhere to stay right now”.

Across the street from the home where the couple was shot, 13-year-old Gabriel Whiteside woke up to the sound of screeching tires and looked out his bedroom window. “I know you’re frightened, ‘” April Gunnell told WIAT.

Before Thursday’s shootout, Fitzgerald and Harper, both in their 30s, had faced charges after allegedly carrying out a bevy of armed robberies across the southeast over the past week. Authorities say they had a standoff with the couple outside a home near Milton and a shootout ensues. They got out of the truck and tried to enter an occupied home.

“That only encourages people to be copycats”, the sheriff said.

“We did look at their pictures on Facebook and did identify them as the couple that was being sought after”, she said. Six of his deputies are on administrative leave after the shooting while an investigation is being conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE).

Harper was being treated Friday at a hospital with unspecified injuries.

Their alleged cross-county crime spree started two weeks ago, on January 22nd, when a home in Joplin, Missouri, was robbed and guns were stolen.

“They wanted to get married”, Dease said.

“Bonnie and Clyde were a couple of thugs, too”, he said. Like the other victims, the clerk was released, unharmed.

On Tuesday, Tuscaloosa Metro Homicide investigators released security video of Fitzgerald talking to Kyle Dease shortly before they allegedly robbed and kidnapped him at gunpoint.

Fitzgerald and Harper dropped the woman off in her bathrobe behind a medical center unharmed, York said.

In issuing an all-points-bulletin on the Gulf Coast for Fitzgerald and Harper, the U.S. Marshals Service earlier in the week called the couple a “modern-day Bonnie and Clyde”.