‘I’m so sorry.’ ‘Roofman’ robber politely threatened lives in NC McDonald’s
For an armed robber, he was polite. The sawed-off rifle he aimed at the hodgepodge group of Charlotte-area McDonald’s workers trying to open their store?
Not as disarming.
Jeffrey Allen Manchester appeared out of nowhere on May 20, 2000. He came from a hole cut into the roof and landed on the fast-food chain’s floor. He walked while “squatting… like in the Army” one worker told Belmont Police Department officers after escaping from the cooler the robber trapped them in.
The California U.S. military sergeant turned masked robber said “yes ma’am” and “no ma’am” and “please lie on your stomach” as he stole about $8,000 from the burger joint, according to police reports. He was “calm,” gentle, even, but:
“This guy was crazy,” then 18-year-old Shawn Fields told police. He saw Manchester and the barrel of his gun on his first day working at the McDonald’s on Main Street in then-rural Belmont.
“I know he could kill us if he wanted to,” Shawn told police, according to court records reviewed by The Charlotte Observer.
Manchester was caught hours after that 5 a.m. heist, but his story doesn’t end with clasping handcuffs and a confession to police patrolling the small N.C. town. He would escape from prison years later, live a double life with a dwelling inside a Toys R Us, return to robbing, burn down a building and eventually again feel the cold of metal tightening around his wrists.
His new love interest would help police catch him. Hours earlier, she knew him to be someone else entirely.
Then nearly two decades later, Paramount Pictures would make a movie out of it as Manchester sat in prison.
Channing Tatum plays Manchester in the new Hollywood-ized but true-to-Charlotte film called “Roofman.” And Kirsten Dunst plays Leigh Wainscott, the Charlotte mom Manchester dated while hiding out off Independence Boulevard. The movie, which was filmed across Charlotte, opens Friday, Oct. 10.
“This is a true story,” the screen reads in the first second.
But the filmmakers took creative liberties. Here’s the true story of Manchester — or “Roofman” or “Rooftop Robber” — as told through newspaper archives, court documents and exclusive interviews with those involved in his case.
The first NC robbery
Elaine Snyder, 49, was showing young Shawn Fields how to clean bathrooms on his first day of work when she heard a loud noise.
She turned around to see a masked gunman dressed in all black, kneeling on the floor. He had dropped in from a hole he had carved into the roof.
You have mace? An alarm? Manchester asked Elaine.
She didn’t.
So Manchester swung the gun around and demanded Elaine’s four coworkers lie on the ground and “don’t do anything stupid.” Then he pressed the barrel against her back and told her to open the safe. She could hardly think. She struggled to breathe. Her back spasmed.
She froze.
Then Manchester, while pointing a .22-caliber rifle at her, went off-script.
“Breathe slow,” he said. “Calm down.”
She did. Or tried to, at least.
She obediently shoved the cash in Manchester’s bag and asked if he wanted the change.
“Yeah,” he said, “I like quarters.”
He took $420 in quarters. Counting all the $1, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 bills, he had a total of $8,023.67. Some of it was from the McDonald’s in Gastonia he had robbed through the roof at closing time the night before.
Then everything started beeping. McMuffin sausages and apple pies were burning, and the coworkers — aged 18, 19, 38 and 78 — were helplessly face down on the floor.
Manchester let Mirvat Fayad, 19, tend to the food. And then he apologized. Repeatedly, reportedly.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re the good people,” he said. “I’m the bad guy. I’m sorry for doing this to you.”
This is the most ridiculous robbery ever, Mirvat thought.
After zipping his bag, Manchester started moving the crew to the cooler.
“Not the freezer,” he said, “that’s too cold.”
Elaine was still stunned. Still mute.
She helped “Grandma,” the 78-year-old named Edith, up and followed Manchester’s orders.
Manchester left them in the cooler and jammed a lemon slicer in the frame. Someone would let them out soon, he said.
Elaine nervously laughed — or tried to — as she exchanged confused, scared glances with her employees. Terror dried her mouth. Mirvat gave her a carton of milk.
One of them broke down the door, and Elaine, taking one last swig, called Belmont police.
Thief nabbed at empty church lot
As patrol cars hurtled toward the yellow arches on Main Street, Officer Tony Adkins noticed a car in Mount Moriah’s Church parking lot. It was Saturday. The lot should be empty, he knew. So he pulled in to check on the white 1999 Pontiac Sunfire. A large black bag sat under it.
It was Manchester’s rental car.
Within minutes, Manchester came sprinting out of the woods and toward the car. When Adkins flashed his lights on, Manchester kept running, grabbed the bag, dropped the bag, scaled a six-foot-fence and vanished into the weeds.
Adkins called for backup, and police quickly found Manchester hiding in shrubs by the water tower. He had his military ID on him.
About two hours later, he agreed to talk to police without a lawyer.
He confessed — to all of it.
Military man jailed in NC
Inside Manchester’s Pontiac rental, police found a rifle bought off the street, his roof-carving tools and a North Carolina road map. There was a DVD player and eight DVDs, too. They included: “Three Kings,” “Double Jeopardy,” “House on Haunted Hill,” “Chill Factor,” “The Abyss” and “Bowfinger.”
Manchester told police he had been in the state for only about three days. He had been stationed in Tampa, Florida, in late April and then Morehead City in mid-May. He and a friend were allowed to leave North Carolina early, in the middle of the week, but Manchester stayed behind. He said was going to stay with some friends.
He went west, rented a car in New Bern and headed towards Gaston County.
By Friday evening he was robbing the Gastonia McDonald’s at closing time. By Saturday morning, after robbing the second in Belmont, he was handcuffed.
It was dumb, he admitted to police, but he did it “for the money … to pay bills and buy things for my kids.”
“I will do everything I can do to fix the situation. I still have a lot to give the community and the Army,” said Manchester, who had recently divorced from the mother of his three young children. “I thought it was going to be quick cash, and I ended up scaring people and wasted the police’s time as well, and I am sorry for that.”
Authorities in California would later say they thought Manchester was the culprit in a string of more than 40 other robberies in their state and others. His military travels put him near those other robbery locations, they found. While that belief would earn Manchester the “Roofman” or “Rooftop Robber” moniker, Manchester told N.C. police: “I have never done anything like this before, and I won’t do it again.” He said he “got the idea from news of similar circumstances” in California.
No one has ever proven his story wrong.
Belmont police charged Manchester with a slew of felonies: robbery with a dangerous weapon, breaking and entering, and eight counts of first-degree kidnapping. They held him on a $1 million bond. He was prosecuted and sentenced in Gaston County before federal agents could take him back to California and question him on his alleged other crimes.
He turned down a plea deal, which would have let him serve 15 to 22 years in prison. He could’ve served it in California — close to the family he said he was stealing for. But Manchester didn’t think he was guilty of kidnapping for forcing employees into coolers, said his public defender, Kelly Morris.
“While he may have been nice to them,” prosecutor Angela Hoyle said, “it is still terrifying to have a gun pointed at you and be ordered to get into a cooler when you have no idea how long you’re going to be there.”
So Hoyle filed the multigenerational group of McDonald’s workers into the courthouse. They testified in Manchester’s trial, and — after hearing their accounts — a jury from the town west of Charlotte found Manchester guilty.
He was sentenced to 35 years.
But after serving just four, he escaped from prison, then hitched rides to get up Highway 74 to Charlotte. He made a hideout home in and around a Toys R Us and, after about four months, ventured outside to a church.
Eventually, he grew bolder. He got a new car, a new girlfriend and a new gun. Then he robbed and burned and saw his story end while holding a bouquet of flowers.
Continue reading: The real ‘Roofman’ | Part 2
After jailbreak, Jeffrey Manchester hid in a Charlotte Toys R Us — but also in plain sight.
This story was originally published September 30, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
