The Dayton Daily News has reported on the St. Elizabeth Pharmacy and U.S. Bank robberies and kidnappings since the first incident in 2011. We are the first news outlet to inform you about the link between the two crimes as detailed in federal court documents.
The FBI recently pieced together evidence to link two Dayton robberies that included dramatic kidnappings and two families being held at gunpoint.
The November 2011 robbery of the St. Elizabeth Pharmacy and the February 2012 robbery of the U.S. Bank on Gettysburg Avenue were perpetrated by the same group of men, according to court documents filed in Dayton’s U.S. District Court.
Both involved suspects kidnapping employees and their family members. The alleged robbers took 1,000 Percocet and Oxycodone pills worth $30,000 from the pharmacy and $90,000 in cash from the bank. To tie the crimes together, the FBI used surveillance video, DNA analysis, telephone records, confidential informants and a cooperating witness.
The newspaper is the first to report on the link between the robberies.
“This type of case, this type of crime is so sensational,” said Timothy Ferguson, FBI senior resident agent in Dayton. “This is something you see in the movies with somebody zip-tied and duct-taped and kidnapped… . For it to be able to come to fruition after two years was really satisfying for us.”
Last month, the FBI announced the Colombus- and Dayton-area arrests of Shellie Woods, Terrell Mabry, Dion Gullatte and Jason Brice. Eric Black also was arrested and connected to the crimes. All face federal charges of bank robbery, weapons possession and kidnapping, according to Ferguson.
“I believe that Woods organized or supervised both the U.S. Bank and the St. Elizabeth Pharmacy robbery,” FBI special agent Jason Merrill wrote in court documents. All four defendants are in custody, and their cases are moving forward in the Southern District of Ohio. Woods has since been convicted of federal trafficking of marijuana and obstruction of justice. One of the defendants, who authorities declined to name, is scheduled to appear in court today.
In court records, the FBI alleges that on Nov. 10, 2011, four black men wearing dark clothes, masks and gloves followed a pharmacy technician into his Englewood residence and forced him to the floor “and then restrained him with zip ties and duct tape.” The man’s wife had duct tape placed over her eyes and the men demanded the keys and alarm codes to the pharmacy, according to the documents.
The documents also show the man’s wife activated a medical alert device, and the robbers threatened to kill both victims if they contacted police before the robbery was complete. The technician’s wife told medics who responded to the house that she accidentally activated her medical alarm “for fear that the intruders would return and kill her if she reported the home invasion too soon.”
Similarly, two armed masked men on Feb. 15, 2012, entered the residence of a U.S. Bank teller and took the teller’s husband and her two daughters hostage. When the teller returned from work, she was taken hostage at gunpoint and forced to reveal the alarm and vault code to the bank. She was forced into a vehicle and taken to the bank. The vault did not open so the men took her to the bank again the next morning to retrieve the cash while her family remained held captive.
After that robbery was over, law enforcement personnel recovered evidence, including a gray glove from the teller’s car, documents say. A probable cause complaint written by an FBI agent said they received tips from two confidential informants.
Shown a copy of a newspaper article about the pharmacy robbery, Woods allegedly said, “This how we do it.” Police learned of Woods’ address, obtained a search warrant and recovered numerous items including guns, clothes and zip ties.
The FBI was able to connect: Mabry’s DNA with the glove left in a victim’s car and sweatpants from Woods’ residence; Gullatte’s DNA from a ski mask and a gray hooded sweatshirt matching surveillance video from the pharmacy robbery; Black’s DNA from a Neoprene mask from Woods’ residence; surveillance video with Brice’s identity. The FBI also connected all to each other through historical phone records and noted that the handguns match those described by victims.
Ferguson said the case took two years to get to this point because the FBI wanted to be sure before taking someone into custody, the time it took for DNA hits to come back and because cooperating witnesses can be fickle. He said the arrests were the result of work by the FBI Safe Streets Task Force, Dayton police and the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.
Ferguson said the investigation is ongoing into what he called a coordinated, violent organization. “There may possibly be some other incidents that these individuals are involved in,” Ferguson said. “Us having the DNA evidence, having the cooperating witness evidence, having the gun evidence and the clothing evidence, that all kind of was really what helped push us over the top.”
Englewood police Sgt. Mike Lang called the kidnapping brazen and terrifying for the victims. “We’re lucky in this case that the FBI was able to help out and ultimately identify the people who did this and bring them to justice,” he said.
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