Armed Robbery at College Park Verizon Tied to Multi-county Federal Prosecutions

Three masked suspects, all armed with handguns, forced entry and robbed the Verizon Wireless on the 7200 block of Baltimore Ave in College Park, assaulting an employee and fleeing on foot while Prince George’s County Police and University of Maryland Police investigated the scene. An on-scene Instagram post read: “COLLEGE PARK ARMED CELL PHONE HEIST: Prince George's County Police are on scene after three masked suspects, all armed with handguns, robbed.”

According to Thebaynet, the College Park incident was part of a linked series of armed robberies in late 2020; the outlet assigns the Oct. 23, 2020 College Park robbery to a person identified only as Jones and a co-conspirator and reports that the robbers forced victims into a backroom and “stole $21,440.93 in mobile devices.” The short scene report supplied locally described the theft more generally as iPhones and cash and specifically noted an employee was assaulted during the incident.

Thebaynet says a second robbery on Dec. 8, 2020 targeted a Russell Cellular Verizon store in Columbia, Maryland, where Jones and a co-conspirator posed as customers before pulling a firearm on an employee, moving that employee to a backroom and ordering the safe opened. Thebaynet lists $22,000.33 in mobile devices taken from that location, including numerous iPhones, plus $1,273 taken from the safe.

A third incident on Dec. 17, 2020 at a Russell Cellular Verizon in Halethorpe, Maryland is described by Thebaynet as involving Jones and a defendant named Herring. Thebaynet reports that Herring ordered an employee to open a safe and that the robbers stole multiple boxes of Apple cellular phones, watches and iPads worth about $27,940, and forced the employee to surrender $1,313 from the cash register before fleeing in a stolen Dodge Caravan.

Federal prosecutions followed the three Maryland robberies. Thebaynet reports that a defendant named Dashiell previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison, while Herring was convicted at trial and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. “Phil Selden, Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, announced the sentence with Special Agent in Charge William J. DelBagno of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Baltimore Field Office, and Chief Robert McCullough, Baltimore County Police Department.” According to the parties’ plea agreement, Jones and his co-conspirators brandished firearms during the robberies, threatened to kill employees and customers, physically moved victims throughout the stores, and pepper sprayed victims during one of the robberies.

Local scene reporting and federal filings do not line up in every detail. The short College Park scene report and Instagram post describe suspects fleeing on foot and an assault at the store, while Thebaynet ties Jones to the Oct. 23 robbery and quantifies the loss at $21,440.93; the reporting excerpts provided do not supply first names, arrest dates for the College Park suspects at scene, court docket numbers, or a clear description of how local investigations transitioned into the federal prosecutions. Those gaps remain in publicly available excerpts even as federal sentences have been reported.