Plummer said Thomas and three other people traveled to the Dayton area to attempt to rob the Cash To Go Pawn Shop, 3694 Salem Ave, before a fire-fight broke out.
The store’s manager, 53-year-old Ilya Golub, was shot multiple times with a .357 caliber revolver and died later at an area hospital.
Police believe Golub shot one of the four robbers, a 44-year-old man whom Plummer did not identify, multiple times with a handgun. The robber died after the robbery, and the group dumped his body somewhere in Michigan, leaving it propped up against a building, Plummer said.
Police have identified and are currently trying to locate the other two suspects .
Detectives found Thomas thanks to two witnesses who identified the license plate and make of the van the suspects used for their getaway, Plummer said.
“It’s a tragedy. (Golub) was a mainstay in our community. We all knew him because we worked the street,” Plummer said.
Golub came to Dayton in the late 1980s along with his wife and two children to escape persecution in the former U.S.S.R., friends said. The Golubs were among about 200 Russian Jews who sought political asylum in the Dayton area around that time.
Golub worked in the pawn shop from around 9 a.m. to
6 p.m. every day except for Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, said longtime pawn shop patron and friend Michael Taylor.
He was tough, but a fair and personable businessman who cared about the people he worked with, said Taylor.
“Here he was trying to make a life for himself in the American way, ” said Joe Bettman, who helped the Golubs get established in Dayton through the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton. “It’s a terrible tragedy.”
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