By Shavonne Walker

shavonne.walker@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — A Salisbury man with a distinctive tattoo is in jail after police said he approached a woman in a store, followed her and robbed her outside a restaurant.

The man was arrested within hours of the incident. The victim was shaken up but not harmed, police said.

Salisbury police charged William Pierre Hargrave, 21, of the 500 block of Harrel Street, with felony common law robbery and misdemeanor assault on a female. He remains jailed in the Rowan County Detention Center under a $32,500 secured bond.

Hargrave goes by the nicknames Boosie, Badazz and Offset, police said.

The woman had just left Ulta and went inside Michael’s about 9 p.m. Monday. She told officers that while she was in the store, a man with a small cross tattoo between his eyes followed her around, said police Capt. Shelia Lingle.

The woman continued shopping and, at one point, the man touched her behind. She went to the register, checked out and left, but when she got to the parking lot, the same man asked her if she needed help getting her items in the car. The woman said she ignored him and got into her car.

She drove to Longhorn Steakhouse, near the same shopping complex, and was approached by a different man who asked her for a cigarette. She told the man she did not have one and moved her vehicle into a better lighted part of the parking lot.

When she started to get out of her vehicle, she saw the man with the tattoo run between some bushes and pull her door open, police said. The man reached over her and grabbed for some cash she had in the vehicle’s center console. She grabbed for the money until the man said, “Give it up or I’ll blow your head off.” The woman said she never saw a gun.

The woman told her smartphone to dial 911. The suspect took the phone and ran toward Olive Garden restaurant. About the same time, police were talking with a loss prevention officer at Kohl’s who said he believed he caught the same suspect on video. A surveillance video showed the man in the Kohl’s parking lot prior to the incident. He was driving a white Dodge Neon and had thrown a beer can from the vehicle.

Police issued a description of the man and his vehicle as well as the license plate number. A Rowan County sheriff’s deputy stopped the vehicle at the Speedway convenience store at 3410 S. Main St. Authorities said they found a pink cellphone that belonged to the woman in the vehicle.

A second man in the car, Brian Keith White, 46, of the 600 block of East Cemetery Street, was charged with misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia. Police said he had a glass pipe that contained a Brillo pad on one end and was burned on the other.

White is also known as Kevin Bradley Smith and Brian Jones and goes by the nickname Possum, police said.