TOMS RIVER — A day after being released following a 15-year stay in state prison for robbing a Toms River shoe store, a 40-year-old man allegedly committed the same crime at the same business, authorities said today.

When Christopher M. Miller woke up Friday morning, he was on the verge of being freed from South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton. A little more than 24 hours later, he returned to the scene of his crime — the Stride Rite shoe store on Hooper Avenue in Toms River — and demanded cash from the store’s two employees, police said.

Miller took the cash register containing $389 but the workers refused his demand to turn over their car keys, authorities said. Instead, Miller took cellphones belonging to a 17-year-old boy and a 43-year-old woman before fleeing on foot.

"He was not armed but just made a verbal threat," police spokesman Ralph Stocco said. He said that Miller became agitated when the employees did not move as quickly as he liked.

"He took the drawer out himself," Stocco said.

The employees quickly notified police, who enlisted the help of a K-9 named Cyrus and tracked down Miller on nearby Feathertree Drive. Police found the employees’ phones in a garbage can in the shopping center and the money in a gutter downspout in the back of the building, police said.

Miller, who told police he is from Tulsa, Okla., was convicted in 1999 of robbing the Stride Rite. During that robbery, he brandished a box cutter, tied up employees in a storage room and stole an undetermined amount of cash. He served 15 years until his release last week.

As of this afternoon, Miller was still being held on $100,000 bail at the Ocean County jail. Authorities are trying to determine what his connection is to the Toms River area.

A store employee declined to comment when reached by phone this afternoon.

According to state Department of Corrections records and news accounts from the time, Miller was living in Toms River when he was convicted for theft in 1997.

Incarcerated at the Stokes Unit of the Mountainview Youth Correctional Facility in Montague, he escaped from a work detail in June of that year. He was apprehended a few days later to serve out that term.

Star-Ledger staff writer Richard Khavkine contributed to this report.



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