On Friday, March 1, 2024, after less than an hour of deliberation, a federal jury convicted Donte Antwaun Herring, age 24, of Washington, D.C., for the armed robberies of two phone stores in December 2020.
The guilty verdict was announced by Erek L. Barron, United States Attorney for the District of Maryland; Acting Special Agent in Charge R. Joseph Rothrock of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Baltimore Field Office; and Chief Robert McCullough of the Baltimore County Police Department.
According to the evidence presented at his eight-day trial, on December 17 and December 23, 2020, Herring and his co-conspirators robbed phone stores in Halethorpe and Owings Mills, Maryland, respectively. In each robbery, Herring and his co-conspirators brandished firearms.
Specifically, according to trial testimony, on December 17, 2020, at shortly after 7:15 p.m., Herring and a co-conspirator entered a phone store in the 3900 block of Washington Boulevard, in Halethorpe, Maryland. After initially posing as customers browsing for cell phones, the co-conspirator and Herring announced a robbery and brandished firearms—pointing them in the direction of the victim employee.
Trial evidence proved that Herring ordered the victim employee to take him and the co-conspirator to the store’s safe, then ordered the victim to open the safe.
After the victim opened the safe, Herring and the co-conspirator removed various electronic devices from the safe, including multiple boxes of Apple cellular telephones, watches and iPads, along with cash from the store’s register. They then fled in a maroon minivan.
Witnesses testified that in the robbery on December 23, 2020, co-defendant Rico Dashiell entered a telephone store in the 10000 block of Reisterstown Road in Owings Mills, Maryland and acted like a customer. Herring and another co-conspirator then entered the store brandishing firearms and Dashiell pointed a gun at a victim employee.
Witnesses testified that Herring and the co-conspirator pointed their guns at a victim customer and other employees and ordered them to get down on the floor. The victim customer was also ordered to empty his pockets and Herring and the co-conspirator took the victim’s wallet (containing his driver’s license and credit cards), along with his car keys, which were on an orange lanyard, and an Apple iPhone 8S plus, valued at approximately $350. Herring and the co-conspirator went to the back room and Dashiell escorted a victim employee to the back room at gunpoint and ordered the victim to open the store safe.
The victim complied and Herring and the co-conspirator removed nearly all of the electronic devices from the safe—including Apple and Samsung Galaxy devices (76 devices total)—and placed them in large garbage bags they had brought with them. When Herring and the co-conspirator finished emptying the safe, they ordered the three victims from the main floor of the store to the room in the back of the store where the safe was kept.
According to trial testimony, as Herring and the co-conspirator left the room, the co-conspirator sprayed pepper spray at the victims’ faces.
In the meantime, Dashiell directed a victim employee to open the store’s cash register and stole $322 from the register.
Herring and his co-conspirators then fled in a vehicle that had been stolen earlier in the day and that had tags stolen from another vehicle.
According to trial evidence, law enforcement was able to track the vehicle to a home in Catonsville, Maryland, where aviation units were able to film Herring, Dashiell and the co-conspirator unloading the stolen merchandise from the car and taking it into the residence.
As detailed in trial testimony, law enforcement officers arrived at the residence and attempted for hours to make contact with the suspects and any other occupants of the residence. After two young children who lived at the residence (who had no relation to the robbers) came out of the house, law enforcement executed a search warrant of the residence and arrested the robbers, who had been hiding in the attic.
During a search incident to his arrest, law enforcement seized, among other things, $622.16 from the co-conspirator ($322 of which was proceeds from the robbery), along with a round of ammunition.
According to trial evidence, during their search of the residence, law enforcement also recovered, among other things, the clothing, gloves, and headwear worn by the robbers during the robbery; the 76 devices stolen during the robbery; the canister of pepper spray used to spray the victims during the robbery; the stolen wallet belonging to one of the victims of the robbery; and the three firearms used by Herring, Dashiell and the co-conspirator during the robbery; as well as a Polymer 80 Gray Grip with a black slide 9mm semi-automatic pistol, with no serial number, commonly known as a “ghost gun,” which was also loaded.
Electronic evidence presented at trial included multiple text messages in which Herring discussed his planning of the December 23, 2020 robbery. It likewise included photographs from a co-conspirator’s iCloud account that showed Herring holding large amounts of cash within hours of the robbery on December 17, 2020.
Co-defendant Rico Dashiell, age 25, of Fort Washington, Maryland, previously pleaded guilty to his role in the robbery and was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison.
Herring faces a maximum of 20 years in federal prison for each of two counts of interference with commerce by robbery and a mandatory minimum of seven years, consecutive to any other sentence, and up to life in federal prison for each of two counts of brandishing a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence. U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Maddox has scheduled sentencing for May 31, 2024 at 10:00 a.m.
U.S. Attorney Erek L. Barron commended the FBI and Baltimore County Police Department for their work in the investigation. Mr. Barron also thanked Assistant United States Attorneys Paul A. Riley and Michael Aubin, who are prosecuting the case.
