Habitual offender who held MS Coast Hardee’s employees at gunpoint gets his sentence
A Gulfport man is headed to prison after he pleaded guilty this week in a 2023 armed robbery of a Hardee’s restaurant in Gulfport.
Charles Darkeith Brown, 34, of Gulfport will spend 25 years in prison, the Harrison District Attorney’s office announced Wednesday.
Brown was on parole for armed robbery and grand larceny when he fired a bullet that smashed the restaurant door and stole money from the safe and cash register on January 2, 2023, the District Attorney’s office said in a news release.
Judge Randi Mueller sentenced brown as a habitual offender and he must serve his whole sentence with no possibility of parole or early release.
Brown fired into the Hardee’s restaurant on Highway 49 in Gulfport when the employees were closing down, the release said. Employees heard a gunshot and glass shattering, and surveillance cameras captured a man entering the shattered restaurant door, jumping the counter and pointing a gun at an employee, the release said.
The man forced the employee to open the safe. Another employee left the bathroom and apparently startled the man, who fired another shot into the floor, the release said. A small fragment of that bullet struck one of the employees in the leg, the District Attorney’s office said.
The suspect took money from the safe and cash register and fled the scene.
Police later identified the suspect as Brown and found him at his home in Gulfport.
Under police questioning, Brown confessed to the armed robbery, according to the release.
Ballistics analysis of a gun recovered from Brown’s home showed the weapon fired the bullets and casings found inside the Hardee’s the night of the robbery, according to the District Attorney.
Assistant District Attorney Ian Baker prosecuted the case.
