In 1999, 25-year-old Christopher Miller was arrested after he forced employees into the back room of the Stride Rite shoe store on Hooper Avenue in Toms River, New Jersey. After a 15-year sentence, on Friday, March 21, 2014, Miller was released from South Woods State Prison in New Jersey. The very next day, Miller, now 40 years old, took a bus from Atlantic City to Toms River and went to the same shoe store.
Employees tell police that he entered the store and demanded cash, telling two workers to go to the back room. When the employees refused, Miller became agitated and took the cash register drawer, which had $389. He then took the workers' cell phones and fled on foot. Police say he was found a few blocks away, with the cash stashed in a gutter and the phones in a garbage can.
Toms River Police Chief Mitchell Little speculated, "Maybe [prison life is] the only life he knows, and the only thing he could think of was going back to the same store and doing the same crime again—getting caught and going back where he was taken care of and told what to do and getting meals and shelter and everything else."
