Kelby
Blakney, Dominic Lyde, Dominque Blakney, Darryl Frierson, and Jeremy Mc
Phail are responsible for a $9.8 million heist on an armored car.
COLUMBIA,
South Carolina — Six young men who staged one of the largest armored
car heists in U.S. history, then spent a week splurging on strippers,
high-living and even Mother's Day gifts, are asking a South Carolina
judge for mercy.
On Monday, the men — four of whom were college
students at the time of the holdup — will learn their punishment for
$9.8 million robbery and the beating of a guard who was left bloodied
and bound on a secluded road beside a strawberry patch in Columbia in
2007.
While
prosecutors have asked a judge to sentence all but one of the men to at
least 25 years, relatives and defense attorneys insist they are not
scheming criminals, just misguided youth.
"He's a person that —
once he recognizes he's made a mistake — he makes a change in his life,"
Gail McPhail, the mother of one of the men, said during a hearing
earlier this month. "I believe he has greatness in him."
The
crime was sloppy and the coverup quickly discovered. The men didn't even
bring enough garbage bags to haul away all the $18 million in the
armored car, defense attorneys said. More than half of the money they
stole remains missing.
"This type of crime doesn't belong in any
pantheon of crime," defense attorney Joe McCulloch said during the Aug.
10 hearing. "There wasn't a whole lot of sophistication here."
Prosecutors
have a different view. They said the Express Teller Services car was
stopped at a gas station to refuel when two men wielding weapons
overpowered a guard. The armored car was driven to a dirt road where two
other men waited in a second vehicle to unload the money.
"This
isn't two guys that knocked over granddad's liquor store — there's a
lot more to it than that," prosecutor Dan Goldberg said. "It was a
well-thought out, calculated plan. Each person involved had their own
role. They had their own job and they executed them. ... And there was a
far reaching impact as a result of their actions."
Jeremy
McPhail, 21, of Society Hill; Dominic Lyde, 24, of Darlington; Domonique
Blakney, 21, of Darlington; Paul Whitaker, 23, of Sumter; Kelby
Blakney, 22, of Darlington; and Darryl Frierson, 23, of Columbia, have
all pleaded guilty in the case.
Underestimating
the amount of their score, the men only made off with a little more
than half of the money. They left one guard badly beaten, duct taped
with broken bones and knocked out teeth, while the other guard — whom
authorities have called the mastermind of the heist — appeared unharmed.
For a week, the men spent money on strippers, tennis shoes, tattoos, electronics, used cars — even Mother's Day gifts.
Five
of the six have pleaded guilty to armed robbery, kidnapping, assault
and battery of a high and aggravated nature and conspiracy. Whitaker,
who also worked for the armored car company, has pleaded guilty to
conspiracy.
Brothers Domonique and Kelby Blakney have already
been sentenced, but are asking a judge to reduce their prison terms from
25 years. Prosecutors have asked that their request be denied and that
McPhail, Lyde and Frierson each be given least 25 years in prison.
Whitaker will likely get a lesser sentence, prosecutors said.
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