POSTED: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 5:34pm
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 5:38pm
Shreveport, La — Thanks to a series of phone calls to Crime Stoppers, a thief has been arrested for stealing money from a 10-year-old girl.
It all began on August 11th at around 5:30 p.m., when the victim entered A-1 Beauty Supply on the 1800 block of N Market to make a purchase while her grandmother waited outside in the car. The girl laid $13 on the register counter in front of her while she waited her turn to pay and began playing with a fan. While she was distracted, the suspect, Tanika Stephenson, approached the counter, eating an ice cream cone, made a purchase and while she was waiting for the clerk to return her change, she took the child's money from the counter, placed it into her purse and left the store.
Store video was obtained and enhanced, was released to the media and placed on the Caddo Crime Stoppers Youtube channel. http://youtu.be/mCVQRmChxzY [1] The video went viral over the weekend with over 3,700 hits which resulted in numerous tips naming Tanika Stephenson as the suspect and numerous other pieces of personal information about her which included her Facebook account with photo.
On Monday, at about 10:30 a.m., Stephenson entered the Shreveport Police Detective office and surrendered after she received a flood of phone calls from citizens all weekend, some not so pleasant, according to Stephenson. She was arrested and booked into the City Jail for one count of Misdemeanor Theft.