Stepdad of 7-Eleven robbery victim nabs suspect

SHELBY TWP., Mich. (WJBK) - Rebecca Koester hadn't worked the overnight shift at 7-Eleven for long, but she had a gut feeling Thursday wasn't going to go well.

"I had a really bad feeling something was going to happen," she said. "The feeling just kept getting worse and worse, and it was just a very weird night."

It was a weird night that turned dangerous when a man walked through the front door of the store on 24 Mile and Shelby Road.

"This guy, he came in and he bought a Red Bull, and he looked very, very suspicious," Koester said.

But then he left -- or least she thought he had.

That bad feeling Koester had was confirmed when the man came back into the store minutes later and put a Twix bar on the counter.

"He gave me the money," she said. "I opened the register and then he grabbed my shirt and pulled it down, and he held a knife to me ... and (said) give me the money, don't pull the alarm. So I held up this hand and I'm just giving him the money."

She did what he said -- anything to get that knife away from her throat, while keeping a cool and level head.

"Then as soon as he left I pulled the alarm and then I thought I need to get his license plate number," she said.

Koester said she also told police anything she could to get him caught.

"(He) was hunched over like this and he had a limp, and I thought that was really weird and he literally hobbled out of the store," she said.

It just so happens her stepdad is Fred Posavetz, the chief of police with Clinton Township, who, along with other members of a crime task force, was able to track the suspect down and arrest him Friday afternoon.

This was a great relief to a woman who said if she learned anything from this it's to trust her instincts.

"This is my bad feeling," Koester said. "Some people don't believe in that but I strongly do."