Casino owner robbed at gunpoint
By GEORGE LEDBETTER, Editor and KEVIN WOSTER, Rapid City Journal Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Life was back to normal at the State Line Club & Casino Thursday night, less than 24 hours after owner Roger Markley was robbed at gunpoint.
“So far so good,” Markley joked at about 6:30 p.m., as regular customers showed up for a meal, a drink and free poker night. “It’s typical tonight.”
Things turned far from the typical Wednesday night, however, when three men entered the bar area of the club around 10:30 p.m. and one of them pulled a gun and demanded money.
“It was just me and them,” Markley said. “He cocked the gun when he drew it and pointed it between my eyes.”
Asked if he thought the robber might shoot him, Markley said: “I gave him the benefit of the doubt.”
With the gun barrel jammed in his ribs, Markley gave up “more than pocket change” to the robbers and watched as they took the money, grabbed a telephone from the bar and disappeared into the night. Thursday morning, the phone was found ringing in the parking lot.
Chadron resident Earl Russell, 36, a field mechanic for Running Strong for American Indian Youth, was in the restaurant of the divided business when the robbery occurred.
“When Roger told me he’d been robbed, I saw the look of terror and fear in his eyes, and I felt those people needed to be apprehended, so they couldn’t continue to victimize people,” Russell said. “I went outside and saw them leaving the parking lot, so I jumped in my truck and started chasing them. And I got on the phone with 911 in Chadron.”
Russell said the fleeing pickup ahead of him topped 100 mph on the 20-mile drive into Chadron. Russell tried to keep pace in his 1983 half-ton four-wheel drive Chevy, periodically calling authorities with updates.
“I stayed with them all the way to Chadron. Then I got out of the way and let them [the police] handle their business,” he said. “After the police got on the vehicle, I just got out of the way. I spoke to an officer and filled out a statement. That was all the involvement I had.”
Russell said he was not scared until after he was done chasing the robbers.
“I was upset. They had victimized my friends that own the place. I wanted to make sure they got caught so they didn’t victimize someone else.”
He visits the State Line Club about “four or five times a week” and has never seen trouble happen there before. “It’s usually a quiet place, a nice plate to go and relax and have some food and people to visit with,” he said.
Markley’s wife, Barbara, who was in the other room when her husband was robbed, said Russell’s pursuit and phone calls were crucial in helping authorities arrest five robbery suspects in Chadron.
“He (Earl) really was the hero in this. He really was,” she said. “And the authorities really did their job after that.”
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Rapid City Journal photo by Dick Kettlewell The State Line Club & Casino robbery was the beginning of a 14-hour manhunt in Chadron.
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