A 28-year-old man stands accused in an armed robbery at a Vancouver smoke shop in late June.
Timothy Michael Delisle was arrested on suspicion of first-degree robbery and first-degree assault. He made a first appearance Tuesday in Clark County Superior Court. Judge Daniel Stahnke set Delisle’s bail at $75,000, according to court records.
Court records show Delisle is homeless in Vancouver.
The robbery happened the morning of June 29 at House of Smoke, 10300 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd. An employee of the shop told 911 dispatchers while police were en route that she’d just been robbed at gunpoint, and the suspect took off on foot, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Video footage from the shop confirmed the robber pointed his gun at the employee, who described the man for officers — a slender white man standing 6 feet tall, wearing blue jeans, a gray zip-up hoodie and a yellow mask.
An officer who reviewed that footage recognized the suspect as Delisle; he’d had several run-ins with Delisle over the past year, court records say. The officer noted he was able to immediately identify Delisle because of the man’s distinct voice, a red goatee partially visible despite the mask and a tattoo on the top of his left hand, according to the affidavit.
Another officer reported about a week later that he’d reached the same conclusion about the robbery suspect. Vancouver Police Department Drug Task Force officers had also received information from a confidential informant, who claimed Delisle had stated he robbed the shop, according to the affidavit.
On July 14, the shop employee identified Delisle from a photo laydown, according to the affidavit. She said she was shaken up by what happened and had quit her job because of it.
She explained she “was in constant fear, wondering if the person who robbed her was in custody or not,” the affidavit says.
Officers assured the woman that Delisle was already in jail for something else; they did not share Delisle’s name with her, but she found his photo on an online jail roster, and then looked him up on Facebook. She texted the officers and stated she was certain the armed robber was Delisle, according to the affidavit.
Delisle is scheduled to be arraigned in the robbery case July 31.
