When 23-year-old Michael King Jr. robbed a Phoenix bank yesterday morning, police already were actively looking for him in a sexual assault/robbery that happened at a Phoenix porn shop nine days earlier.
When King ultimately was arrested, he went out in a hail of cash -- stolen cash -- that he tossed all over the backyard of a Phoenix home yesterday afternoon.
Now he's in trouble.
According to court documents obtained by New Times, King got himself on the radar of the Phoenix Police Department on October 17, after he went into the Pleasure Palace porn shop at 1524 East Van Buren Street in Phoenix and raped an employee.
King, court docs state, entered the store, pulled out a black semi-automatic handgun, and forced the female employee to the back of the store, where he raped her.
In the middle of raping the woman, a customer entered the store. King then told the employee to go to the front of the store and get rid of the customer, or he'd kill both of them, which she did. King then took the woman to the back of the store again -- and raped her, again.
King then took the woman to the store's bathroom, where he forced her to wash her hands. He then left the store with cash and "merchandise."
Following the sexual assault, King was identified as a person of interest in the case by Phoenix police after the victim identified him in a photo lineup.
Cops had been searching for King for more than a week when he turned up yesterday...robbing a Phoenix bank.
King entered the Chase Bank at 16th Street and Camelback about 11:30 a.m. and handed an employee a note demanding $10,000. He told the clerk he would shoot employees if she didn't comply with his demands.
The employee handed over the cash -- and a bank tracking device -- before King left the bank on foot.
Police tracked King to a backyard near 934 East Georgia Avenue -- he was spotted by an air unit jumping over a fence in the backyard. When police on the ground made contact with King, he threw the cash he'd just stolen from the bank in the air and continued to try to evade officers.
When King was taken into custody, the tracking device the bank employee had stashed in the stolen cash was found in his pocket.
King was positively identified by two people as the person who'd robbed the bank. He later admitted to police that he'd both robbed the bank and raped the Pleasure Palace employee.
King's been booked on four counts of sexual assault, two counts of kidnapping, and one count each of sexual abuse, class-three sexual assault, and armed robbery. He's being held without bail.
