BEL AIR, MD - Authorities say the man who robbed the Bel Air Taco Bell was taken into custody Thursday.

David Joseph Furey, 25, of the 800 block of Pecan Court in Bel Air, was arrested in the early hours Thursday, according to the Bel Air Police Department. He was charged with armed robbery; two counts of burglary; theft less than $1,000; and theft between $1,000 and $10,000, court records show. The development in the case comes one day after police released surveillance photos of the suspect in an effort to identify the masked man who robbed the Taco Bell on Baltimore Pike with a baseball bat.

Police said the suspect forced his way into the building in the 500 block of Baltimore Pike before the restaurant's 7 a.m. opening on Tuesday. Then he allegedly made the employees get into a food locker and demanded that they open the safe.

The Bel Air Police Department responded to a holdup alarm at the Taco Bell at 6:46 a.m. and learned from the employees that the establishment had just been robbed. (Stay up-to-date on this and more local news; subscribe to Bel Air Patch news alerts.)



Three people were inside the restaurant at the time, police said: a 20-year-old Joppa man, a 24-year-old Bel Air woman and a 62-year-old Belcamp woman. Officials said that nobody was injured. The robber was gone before police arrived; he reportedly left with an undisclosed amount of cash. He was described as a man of unknown race and age whose face was concealed.

Authorities said Wednesday that detectives were "actively investigating" and working on locating the suspect, who had been in the 500 block of Baltimore Pike near Taco Bell between 4:30 and 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday.

Furey was charged Thursday morning and taken to the Harford County Detention Center for processing, police reported.