Teen pleads guilty in Sheetz holdup

BY KEITH EPPS

One of the teens involved in a city robbery last year in which three women were pepper-sprayed and another had her car taken at gunpoint pleaded guilty to nine charges Thursday.

Daywand Dylan Johnson, 18, was convicted in Fredericksburg Circuit Court of robbery, carjacking, three counts of assault and battery, wearing a mask in public, shoplifting and two counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony. He will face a minimum of eight years to serve and a maximum of life in prison when he is sentenced Aug. 28.

According to the evidence presented by prosecutor Travis Bird, Johnson was 17 when he and two other young men went into the Walmart in Central Park in Fredericksburg early Aug. 27 and stole BB guns. They went straight to the nearby Sheetz on Fall Hill Avenue and entered the store at 5:50 a.m. wearing masks and dressed in all black.

They pepper-sprayed both clerks and took money from their purses and the store after threatening them with the guns, which appeared to be real, Bird said. One of them put a gun to the head of the lone customer in the store, a 38-year-old Stafford woman, and forced her to the floor. That woman was also pepper-sprayed.

While fleeing the scene, Bird said, Johnson ran up to a car in the parking lot and pointed a gun at the driver. He got into the passenger’s seat, then moved behind the wheel when the woman he’d brandished the gun at got out.

Johnson drove the car to nearby Riverside Manor, where he lived, and abandoned it. DNA tests on blood left in the car showed it was from a cut Johnson had gotten.

Johnson and 16-year-old Daniel Martin Farmer II of Spotsylvania were soon identified as suspects and Bird said both confessed when confronted by police.

Farmer, who was 15 at the time of the incident, has already pleaded guilty to multiple charges and is expected to be in a juvenile facility until he is 21.

The third suspect has not been identified. Bird said the two teens claim they knew him only by a street name and were unable to help police locate him.

Johnson is also facing a felony charge in Stafford. He is accused of assaulting a guard in the Rappahannock Regional Juvenile Detention Center following his arrest in Fredericksburg.

Permalink: http://news.fredericksburg.com/newsdesk/2012/06/21/teen-pleads-guilty-in-sheetz-holdup/