Nearly one month after three unknown men robbed the local KFC, Winnsboro Department of Public Safety now knows the names of the suspects who left six employees in a freezer as they fled from the scene with an undisclosed about of money.

Richard Lee Simmons, Robert Mills Jr. and Toryast Jermaine Johnson, all of Columbia, were arrested Nov. 7, in Aiken after robbing a Burger King restaurant. The men admitted to the armed robbery of KFC locations in both Sumter and Winnsboro.

“After the incident took place here, we sent out a bolo (be on the lookout for) across the state to let other police departments know about the robbery,” said Interim Chief of Public Safety Freddie Lorick. “A week later, as a result of the bolo, we got information about a similar incident taking place in Sumter at a KFC on Nov. 4. That was it for a while until we heard about a similar incident taking place around noon in Aiken at a Burger King.”

Aiken law enforcement caught three of the four robbers immediately following the robbery, the chief explained. Johnson escaped but was later arrested in Richland County. Simmons, who was also tied to the local KFC robbery, shot himself after being corned by law enforcement.

As investigators questioned Mills, Johnson and a third suspect, who cannot be traced to the local robbery, Winnsboro DPS found out the men had murdered a friend and thrown his body out of the car in Columbia prior to arriving in Winnsboro and robbing the KFC on the US Hwy. 321 Bypass.

The men stated they did not set out to rob the restaurant, that they picked it after simply driving around Winnsboro for a while looking for someplace with few customers, Lorick explained.

According to the Winnsboro DPS incident report, three black males – two armed with sawed-off shotguns and one with a pistol – entered the restaurant at 11:25 a.m. They escaped with money as well as the cell phones and wallets of the six employees. No one saw which way the men went.

“These guys were lose cannons,” Lorick said. “It’s a good thing that we didn’t catch up with them the day this all happened, because looking at their frames of mind and the fact that they had just killed someone earlier that day, this could have turned out real nasty. One of my guys or one of them could have gotten hurt.”

Mills and Johnson are currently being held in Aiken County Jail. The men are facing charges in Sumter, Winnsboro and Richland County.