BY KERI CHAMPON

Staff Reporter

LAPLACE- Crime really didn’t pay when a local man was arrested for committing a robbery that yielded no cash.

Mike Tregre, spokesman for St. John Parish Sheriff’s Office said police received a call about a possible burglary in progress in the 100 block of Airline Hwy. on December 14.

The report stated that the front door of a business had been shattered and the register had been taken from the building.

&#8220Officers later received a tip that a cash register was in a garbage can on Goshen Lane in Reserve. Officers located the register and collected it for evidence,” Tregre said.

&#8220Police were then given further information about who had discarded the register. Officers located and questioned Robert F. Roniger who confessed that he had taken the register and hid it in a garbage bag before transporting it and stashing it in the garbage can on Goshen Lane,” he said.

According to the report, Roniger told police that when he went back to where he had hidden the register and forced it open, there was no cash to be found.

Roniger was taken into custody on December 18 and was booked with simple burglary of an immovable structure. His bail was set at $20,000 and he is currently being held in St. John Correctional Center.