A suspect in a 2007 armed robbery has been identified thanks to DNA evidence.

On April 13, 2007, a man wearing a white hockey mask entered into the Golden Coral on Shotwell Street in Bainbridge shortly before midnight and held several employees captive at gunpoint as he took money from the restaurant. The robber fled out the back door of the restaurant. Nearby, officers found clothing identified by restaurant employees as what the robber had worn.

The armed robber was not located, but his clothing was sent to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations Crime Lab in Moultrie, Ga.

On Feb. 18, 2008, Bainbridge Public Safety was notified that the GBI had a possible match between DNA samples taken from the clothing and DNA from a current inmate at the Colquitt County Correctional Institution, Rashid Stroud, 25, of Bainbridge. Stroud is serving a 10-year sentence on a conviction of theft by taking in Decatur County.

BPS Investigator James Dollar obtained a warrant to obtain DNA from Stroud to be compared with that taken from the crime scene—traveling to the correctional institutition to retrieve the sample. It was sent to the crime lab and it came back a match.

Dollar said warrants will be taken for Stroud to be charged with armed robbery in Decatur County Superior Court.