Following a jury trial, Bryan Pinkins was convicted on two counts of armed robbery,1 two counts of aggravated battery,2 three counts of kidnapping,3 three counts of aggravated assault,4 and one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.5 The trial court subsequently vacated Pinkins’s convictions for kidnapping, but denied his motion for a new trial on the remaining charges. Pinkins now appeals from that order, arguing that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress the victims’ pre-trial identification of him from a photographic police line-up. We disagree and affirm. Unless the evidence demands a finding contrary to a judge’s determination, we will not reverse a ruling denying a motion to suppress. Additionally, convictions based on a pretrial identification by photograph and a subsequent identification at trial will be set aside only if the photographic identification procedure was so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification. A court need not consider whether there was a substantial likelihood for misidentification if it finds that the identification procedure was not impermissibly suggestive. An identification procedure becomes impermissibly suggestive when it leads the witness to an all but inevitable identification of the defendant as the perpetrator, or is the equivalent of the authorities telling the witness, “This is our suspect.” Punctuation omitted. Rutland v. State .6 This case arose out of the armed robbery of a Petro gas station and convenience store managed by Mohammed Afridi. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, Drammeh v. State ,7 the evidence shows that late on the evening of October 26, 2005 Afridi was working at the station with his wife and son. Afridi’s son left the convenience store to take a reading of the gas pumps and re-entered the store a short time later, accompanied by a masked man holding a gun to his head. Afridi complied with the gunman’s demand that he unlock the door to the area containing the store’s cash register. The gunman then hit Afridi over the head, pushed both Afridi and his wife to the floor, and demanded that Afridi’s son open the cash register and give him the money contained therein. The son complied and gave the gunman approximately $3,000 from the register. The gunman then forced Afridi, his son, and his wife, into a back storage room of the store and ordered them to lie face-down on the floor, with their hands behind their heads. He robbed both men of their wallets, each of which contained cash and credit cards, and he also robbed Afridi of his cell phone. The gunman then returned to the front part of the store, where the Afridis overheard him talking on what they believed to be a cell-phone, discussing whether he should shoot them. Fearing that the gunman was about to kill his family, Afridi’s son got up and began to close the door that separated the storage room from the front of the store. The gunman then fired five shots at the storage-room door, two of which hit Afridi’s son, causing him serious injury. The gunman fled the scene, and the Afridis contacted police.
Each of the Afridis gave officers a general physical description of the gunman, including his race and estimated height and weight. Because the perpetrator had been wearing a ski mask, however, the victims could not describe his facial features, other than his eyes. They described the gunman’s eyes as “slanted,” “catlike,” and “Chinese.”
