Teen pleads guilty to robbery

August 06, 2007 09:22 pm

— By Jeff Lehr
jlehr@joplinglobe.com
A Joplin teenager, sentenced in June for robbery and burglary under Missouri’s dual-jurisdiction program for juveniles certified to stand trial as an adult, pleaded guilty Monday to another robbery charge and received a concurrent sentence under the same program.
Aaron R. Lang, 16, 104 S. Pearl Ave., pleaded guilty to participating in the Jan. 2 armed robbery of the Conoco Super Stop at 1201 S. Range Line Road.
The plea change on a charge of first-degree robbery was part of a plea-agreement with the county prosecutor’s office dismissing a second felony count of armed criminal action and agreeing to recommend that the sentence be allowed to run concurrent to the sentence Lang had received in June for a robbery and burglary last year.
Circuit Judge Gayle Crane accepted the plea agreement and sentenced Lang to 15 years under the dual-jurisdiction program.
The program allows juveniles certified as adults to serve the time in a facility for juveniles in Montgomery City. If they complete the program there successfully, they are spared being sent to an adult prison.
Lang is one of six suspects charged in the Conoco robbery case. The other defendants are: Jesse Moore, 19; Michael L. Fields, 18; Rahman Griffin, 18; Stafford Griffin, 19; and Ricky R. Smith, 17, all of Joplin.
Lang testified at Moore’s preliminary hearing in July that he, Moore, Fields and the Griffin brothers planned and committed the robbery. Lang told the court that Moore and Rahman Griffin were armed with a rifle and a shotgun when they entered the store.
He testified that the suspects went behind Northpark Mall to change clothes after fleeing the store and running to Moore’s car parked three blocks away. He said they later met at Fields’ house to split up the money and dispose of the guns in a shed there.
Smith was charged in the case based on an interview with Fields that a detective from Suffolk County, N.Y., conducted following the arrest of three of the suspects there on Jan. 11. Fields purportedly told the detective that Smith was involved.
The Griffins, Fields and Moore also face first-degree robbery and armed criminal action charges for a home-invasion incident in Joplin the day after the convenience store robbery.