Local police are waiting to extradite two Chattanooga men to face armed robbery charges after one of the men threatened to blow up a Fort Oglethorpe business.

Robert Hilton Brown, 55, of 949 Boynton Drive and Billy Ray Bowman, 65, of 1300 Gateway Ave. are being held at the Hamilton County jail, charged with driving on a suspended license, driving under the influence and marijuana possession.

Fort Oglethorpe police have obtained armed robbery warrants to transfer the pair to face trial in Catoosa County Superior Court, pending fulfillment of any charges handed down in Hamilton County. If convicted on the armed robbery charge, each man faces a maximum sentence of death or life imprisonment, according to Fort Oglethorpe Detective Steve Blevins.

On Friday, Nov. 16, Brown entered Stewart Finance Co. on LaFayette Road at 2:46 p.m. and told the four employees on duty he had dynamite under his shirt. He threatened to blow up the store if the employees did not give him all of the store’s money, Blevins said.

“He had a bulge under his shirt that the witnesses saw, and he said he wasn’t afraid to die,” the detective said.

Brown took $2,400 of the store’s money and fled in a light blue early 1990s Ford driven by Bowman.

Blevins said responding police officers developed information linking the getaway car to a known client of the business.

“One of the employees got the car’s registration number,” he said. “In the process of the officers’ giving out the information as a lookout to other po-lice, she overheard the name on the tag and said ‘I think we’ve got somebody by that name that is a client.”

Fort Oglethorpe Detective David Scroggins, following up on this information at 3:40 p.m., spotted the vehicle in an area near West Martin Luther King Boulevard in Chattanooga, Blevins said. Scroggins followed the two until they parked nearby, he said. As they attempted to walk away from the car, the officer stopped the men.

“He got out, confronted them and got them on the ground until Chattanooga police could get there and take them into custody,” Blevins said.

Chattanooga police arrested the pair without incident, he said. All of the money taken in the robbery was recovered in the getaway car, he said.

Investigators learned the vehicle belonged to a friend of Bowman’s who did not realize it was missing. The owner was not implicated in the crime.

Authorities did not find any explosives in the suspects’ vehicle