WATERVILLE – Two Massachusetts men and two teen-age boys were held Monday in connection with an early morning motel robbery.

Waterville police charged Dennis J. Mooney, 23, and Manuel A. Roderick, 22, with armed robbery, said Deputy police Chief Joseph Massey. A 17-year-old from Portland and a 16-year-old boy Swansea, Mass., face similar charges. A fifth man remained at large, hours after fleeing state troopers who stopped the suspected getaway car on the Maine Turnpike.

“We’ve been interviewing them one by one throughout the day,” Massey said Monday afternoon. “They were not willing to identify the fifth individual.”

The robbery happened around 4:15 a.m. when two men, one carrying a shotgun, walked into the lobby of the Budget Host Inn off Kennedy Memorial Drive and demanded money.

After obtaining less than $200, the suspects fled with three other males in a brown Volkswagen Jetta, Massey said. Waterville police put out an all-points bulletin 20 minutes later.

The motel is near the city’s airport, less than a half-mile from Interstate 95. “The clerk was able to give us a real good description of the car and the two males who came into the lobby area,” Massey said, adding that the clerk had not been harmed.

At about 5 a.m., 45 minutes after the robbery, a toll taker reported seeing a car matching the description pass through a tollbooth on the Maine Turnpike in New Gloucester. One state trooper responded and began following the car as two others set up along the highway in Portland.

At 5:25 a.m., the troopers stopped the car just north of Exit 8, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety. Four of the suspects surrendered at gunpoint, McCausland said. The fifth suspect, a young African-American male, fled across four lanes of traffic, climbed a fence and ran into some woods. Troopers and Portland police unsuccessfully searched the area with tracking dogs.

Police recovered a shotgun and shells from the car, but neither Massey nor McCausland could say if the weapon had been loaded. The car was impounded and hauled to Arbo’s Towing in Waterville.

The adult suspects, both of New Bedford, Mass., initially were taken with the juveniles to the Portland police station. They later were transferred to the custody of Waterville police detectives, who questioned them for much of the day.

“They’ve given inconsistent stories,” Massey said, declining to elaborate.

In separate cases, the robbery suspects also have been charged with burglaries to a business and a vehicle in nearby Winslow.

Minutes after the motel robbery, a Winslow officer who heard the all-points bulletin told Waterville police he had stopped the suspects’ Volkswagen earlier that morning.

The officer said he pulled over a car near a J & S Oil convenience store off U.S. Route 201, Massey said.

The officer briefly questioned the five occupants, who said they were headed to a nearby home. He let them go after finding no reason to hold them.

“He had a good description and a plate number,” Massey said.

Winslow Police Chief Michael Heavener could not be reached for comment on the case Monday afternoon. Massey said each of the two adult robbery suspects was being held in the Kennebec County Jail in lieu of one piece of Maine property worth $250,00.

The juveniles, facing similar bail, were expected to be taken either to a juvenile lockup at the Androscoggin County Jail or to the Maine Youth Center.

They are scheduled to make their initial appearances Wednesday morning in Waterville District Court.