Police arrest robbery suspect hiding in Spring Hill dumpster
SPRING HILL, Tenn. (WKRN) — Spring Hill authorities not only had to pull a wanted teen out of a dirty dumpster Wednesday evening, but they had to dig through the dumpster out of concern he had left a weapon underneath the garbage.
The situation unfolded after a stolen car out of Marshall County passed by an license plate recognition (LPR) camera on Wednesday, April 10.
Members of the Spring Hill Police Department (SHPD) quickly converged on The Crossings of Spring Hill shopping center and surrounded the stolen Altima.
That’s when the 19-year-old driver, Trevor Armstrong, opened the door and ran, as seen in dash camera footage.
Some officers chased after Armstrong while another officer told the front seat passenger, Kamran Britton, to get out of the stolen car.
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As the 21-year-old stepped out of the vehicle, she asked, “Did I do something?”
“The car’s stolen,” an officer replied.
“I didn’t steal it,” Britton insisted.
After a long run past multiple businesses, police saw Armstrong go into a dumpster.
“Show me your hands! Get out of that dumpster!” an officer yelled.
Body camera footage shows two other officers pulling the suspect out of the garbage and helping laying him on the ground.
Authorities later learned that Armstrong was wanted for a robbery out of Columbia.
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Since police found spent shell casings inside the stolen car, along with an empty gun holster in the trunk, they acted judiciously, considering the possibility that the suspect threw a gun while running.
Officers not only followed the path of the chase, but they also climbed inside of the stinky garbage bin, sifting through layers of trash while looking for a weapon. In the end, though, no firearm was found.
Meanwhile, authorities read Britton her Miranda rights before asking about Armstrong and whether he may have been armed.
“I don’t want a kid finding it, I don’t want a teenager finding it, I don’t want anything like that, so I need you to be completely honest with me because that’s more important,” an officer explained to the young woman. “I don’t need anybody else getting killed because they want to go play with a loaded weapon, okay? So again, I’m just going to ask you, did he have a weapon?”
“No,” Britton replied as she shook her head.
“Officers found evidence inside the vehicle of a weapon that was there at one point probably, and we wanted to make sure that it was not dropped by the suspect or hidden in a bush, so we thoroughly searched the area and we were not able to locate any weapon,” SHPD Lt. Mike Foster told News 2.
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According to Foster, the officers’ good work and the LPR camera network around the city helped get a wanted man off the streets.
Armstrong is not only charged with evading arrest, theft, and burglary of a motor vehicle, but he’s also facing the robbery charges out of Columbia, officials said.
The Columbia Police Department said Armstrong was wanted for a December 2023 robbery where he and two other young men — one of whom was a minor — allegedly snatched a collection bucket from a charity worker outside a store.
Investigators told News 2 the suspects were accused of laying hands on the victim, but no weapon was ever seen in that crime.
As for Britton, she was reportedly charged with making a false report and accessory after the fact.
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