DALTON, Ga. — A Dalton man pleaded guilty recently in Whitfield County Superior Court to armed robbery and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.

District Attorney Bert Poston said Elander Johnson is scheduled to be sentenced on June 5.

According to an incident report, Dalton police officers responded to a report of an armed robbery at a Mapco convenience store at 811 Riverbend Road on June 3, 2017, at about 2:40 in the morning. As officers were en route, dispatch said a store employee reported that the suspect was a black male dressed in black who left the store on foot.

The report said when the officers arrived they found the female clerk crying and “very shaken up.”

“The clerk advised that the suspect had told her not to call the police and she was now worried because she had,” the report said. An officer told her she was safe and had done the right thing.

A man who had pulled up to get gasoline as the suspect left confirmed that he was a black man dressed in black. He said the man had a beard and a goatee.

Several police units responded, and some officers headed to the area the suspect had been seen running toward, north on Fifth Avenue. They spotted a black man with facial hair in a car on Richards Street and asked him to get out of the vehicle. They saw he was wearing a white shirt and bluejeans. An officer thanked him for his cooperation and told him he could go.

The officers walked down Richards Street to Fifth Avenue. The man pulled up in his car and asked to speak to them. He said he’d left a nearby apartment. He said he’d been there with a woman and planned to spend the night but another black male dressed in black came in, “acting very nervous.” The man told officers “he knew something was not right and did not want any part of it” and left.

One officer went to the rear of the apartment building. One went to the front and called the address of the building, 1004 Richards St., in to dispatch. Whitfield County sheriff’s deputies and Dalton police officers arrived and surrounded the building. One officer knocked on the door of the apartment, while another kept him covered with a long gun. “The situation was very tense,” an officer stated. “I called out police and advised them to open the door.”

A female answered the door. An officer asked if anyone else was there. She said her roommate was. The officer asked for the roommate to come out. Instead, the female closed the door. The officer yelled for her to open the door. She did, and another female came out. The officer asked where the man in all black was. She said he had left. The officer asked if they could come in to make sure. The report said she agreed.

Two officers and two deputies began to search the apartment. The deputies found a black male dressed in black in one of the rooms and shouted, “Show me your hands!” The man, who matched the description of the suspect and was later identified as Johnson, was “placed” on the ground and handcuffed.

After obtaining a search warrant, a detective came to the apartment. The detective found a handgun believed to have been used in the robbery and a black hoodie in the bathroom.

Johnson remains in the county jail.