Two charged with robbing man of engagement ring
URBANA — Two men who allegedly robbed a man of an engagement ring in Urbana last week have been arrested and charged.
Urbana police investigator Shaun Cook said the arrests stemmed from an incident that happened about 3 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19, in the 1300 block of North Lincoln Avenue.
A 25-year-old Tolono man had made arrangements via Craigslist to sell an engagement ring to a man he was supposed to meet outside the Atrium Apartments. When the Tolono man, who was in a car, showed the ring to the prospective buyer, the would-be buyer grabbed it and ran.
"When he did that, he pushed off the victim's car door and left his palm print behind," Cook said.
The victim ran after the robber until reaching the south side of the apartment building. There, the ring snatcher joined up with a second man who the victim believed was armed with a gun. The victim then stopped chasing the men and the robbers ran off.
Cook said his sergeant ran the latent palm print through the fingerprint system on Tuesday and found it belongs to Russell Primmer, 18, who listed an address in the 2500 block of Clayton Boulevard, Champaign. He was arrested Thursday morning at his home.
Cook said from information Primmer gave them, they arrested Ryan Brown, 18, who listed an address in the 900 block of West Eads Street, Urbana, about 7:30 p.m. Thursday.
Cook said Brown talked to them, making admissions that implicated both him and Primmer in the holdup.
"It appears he (Brown) held up his cellphone and the victim thought it was a weapon," Cook said.
Brown also gave police information about the whereabouts of the ring, but police have still not recovered it, Cook said.
Both men were charged Friday with two counts of armed robbery and one of aggravated robbery.
Before anyone says something, I understand this is an unfortunate situation, but, how do they get charged with armed robbery, simply because the victim misconfused a cell phone for a weapon. This is how plea bargins and dropped charges happen. Any attorny is going to be able to defend "armed robbery" charges if neither of them were armed with anything other then a visible cell phone.
I dont know if you are going to "scare the daylights" out of someone who is already in the system at 18 years old and obviously continues to keep the career path he has chosen. But either way, one would assume that if neither of these men were armed a decent DA or attorny could get the charges competely dropped.
Forget dropping the charges since both predators implicated each other. Their choice is to prove they did not have a gun and whether a jury would believe the cell phone trick. Being pushed in that corner, the DA will offer a plea bargain of robbery, a reduction of the armed robbery and get a conviction of what probably happened without reducing what probably happened into something less that did not happen, ie, according to the law books, like felony theft, etc. Dropping the charges after they both ratted each other out after Miranda Rights but before lawyering up won't happen. Should not have done it in the first place. Bad choice.
Comments
News-Gazette.com embraces discussion of both community and world issues. We welcome you to contribute your ideas, opinions and comments, but we ask that you avoid personal attacks, vulgarity and hate speech. We reserve the right to remove any comment at our discretion, and we will block repeat offenders' accounts. To post comments, you must first be a registered user, and your username will appear with any comment you post. Happy posting.