Drone used to catch man who robbed west Wichita gas station at gunpoint

A drone was used to catch a 46-year-old man who robbed a west Wichita gas station at gunpoint on Friday morning, police said.

Police were called at 5:20 a.m. about a robbery at 1254 South Tyler.

An employee said a man with a handgun came in the store and demanded money from the register before leaving with the cash and heading west on a bicycle, police said.

Responding officers found a bicycle just west of Tyler that “appeared to have crashed,” police said in a news release. An officer deployed a drone, which caught a man hopping fences in a neighborhood west of the gas station.

Police arrested the man and found cash in his pocket, the release says, adding police also found a gun and clothes nearby from the direction the man had traveled.

“This is exactly how technology helps us in real time,” Wichita police Chief Joseph Sullivan said in the release. “Drones let us quickly deploy, cover a perimeter, and direct officers to the suspect right away. In this case, that quick response was huge, and it helped us get someone who committed a violent crime off the street.”