Suspect arrested in hotel robbery

A suspect who has confessed to a pair of brazen hotel robberies in Madera and Merced is now in custody after his arrest in Fresno.

According to Madera Police Det. Sgt. Mark Trukki, that suspect, Michael Hundley, 20, was arrested in Fresno on Friday morning, and is expected to be arraigned in Madera County Superior Court early next week.

He had been a suspect in a robbery in the morning on Jan. 8 at the Hampton Inn & Suites hotel at 3254 Airport Drive, where Hundley, believed by the clerk to be armed, reportedly made off with $300 from the hotel.

After the robbery, Madera police, reaching out to the Madera community for leads, posted the surveillance footage on their Facebook page, where they quickly were tipped off.

“Somebody from the Merced area saw our video,” Trukki said. “And contacted the Merced Police Department, who in turn contacted us, and said: ‘Hey, we had a similar robbery, and these are our photos.’”

The suspect in the Madera robbery, Trukki said, matched the suspect in a similar robbery at the Ramada Inn in Merced. Madera police received further help from the post when others recognized Hundley in the photos, and in the footage.

“We had three or four people call into Crime Stoppers,” Trukki said. “And say that ‘suspect your looking for is Michael Hundley.’”

It was discovered that Hundley was living out of a car in Fresno on a misdemeanor probation. He was found by Fresno Police at Tulare and M streets, where he was stopped and apprehended. The Fresno Police Department then contacted the Special Investigations Unit in Madera, and did a search of Hundley’s vehicle. Inside, they reportedly found the sweatshirt that he had been wearing in the surveillance footage.

Following an interview, Hundley allegedly confessed to both robberies, and has been booked into Madera County Jail.