newsminer.com

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Benjamin Wallace Rucker lost his wallet and Anchorage police were happy to find it.

Police say Rucker dropped it Wednesday morning in the middle of a middle of a violent crime spree and that the photo identification inside led them to his arrest.

"We would have caught him one way or the other," said Lt. Dave Parker said, "but it just made it so easy."

Rucker, 34, in custody on six felony counts of robbery, assault and vehicle theft. He's also a suspect in the assault and robbery of a cab driver.

Parker said Rucker's rampage began at 10 p.m. Tuesday when a Yellow Cab driver was robbed downtown.

Driver Harold Peaker picked up a fare on Fourth Avenue and two others at Fourth Avenue and Barrow Street. When he stopped near 15th Avenue and Gambell Street, the two men in back started to get out but the man in the front seat demanded money and tried to grab the car key.

"I put my hand on his and was trying to pull his hand off of that, and then he just started whaling on me," Peaker said. "He had a box cutter, and I got three cuts on my head that went all the way to my skull."

He also received serious cuts to his hands. The assault ended when Peaker threw his money to the floor. The robber grabbed it and ran off, he said.

"I was bleeding so bad I couldn't see," Peaker said. "I stood up and I could see two different people down about a half a block away, and I said to the one of them: 'I've just been robbed. Can you help me? I'm hurt bad.' The guy says, 'Uh, I don't have a cell phone.' He just walked on. I couldn't believe it."

Eventually another cab driver pulled up and called police, Peaker said. He spent a day in the hospital having his wounds treated.

Peaker said he at first could not identify Rucker in a photo lineup because the attacker's appearance had changed. When he saw a different picture on the news, he was sure Rucker was the one, he said.

A few hours after Peaker's cab was robbed, at about 12:45 a.m. Wednesday, a two men carjacked a sport utility vehicle belonging to Jimmie Hoyt on Seventh Avenue. The robbers punched Hoyt in the face and sped off with his Akita dog, Sox, still inside, Lt. Parker said.

About two hours later, a man robbed a gas station in south Anchorage.

"He'd come in like a regular old customer and was just real nice," said Chyanne Borgen, a clerk at the store whose co-workers told her what happened. "They turned around for a second and the next thing they knew, he was behind the counter with a gun, said, 'Give me everything that you have.'"

The robber ran out and got into an SUV with a woman, Borgen said. While fleeing, the SUV spun out and stalled in the middle of the road, Parker said.

"His driving skills are lacking," Parker said. The robber "couldn't drive the car away, apparently, so he decided to hijack another car and wasn't able to do that."

The suspect, accompanied by the still-unidentified woman, flagged down a passing green Ford Explorer, driven by David Dunsmore, and forced him out of the vehicle, Parker said. The SUV, however, had a manual transmission.

The vehicle also stalled next to Hoyt's vehicle and the suspect took off running with the woman.

As police arrived, the suspects' footprints already were covered by city snowplows clearing the roads.

The wallet broke the case, Parker said.

"Our big fear was that people would be afraid that there was some rampant wild bunch of people running around Anchorage doing crazy stuff," Parker said. "It turns out that at least most of the mayhem was one individual."

Rucker was booked at the Anchorage jail on $50,000 bail.

Hoyt's dog was picked up in east Anchorage by Good Samaritans, who reunited the Akita with its owner.