JOPLIN, Mo. —
A Springfield man pleaded guilty Friday to robbing the Disabled American Veterans Thrift Store in Joplin and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Circuit Judge David Mouton assessed Stephen N. Agee the prison term at a plea and sentencing hearing in Jasper County Circuit Court.
Agee, 51, changed his plea to guilty at the hearing on a charge of first-degree robbery and waived his right to a sentencing-assessment report as part of an agreement with the Jasper County prosecutor. In exchange for his plea, the prosecutor’s office dropped a related count he was facing for armed criminal action.
Mouton ordered that the sentence run concurrent to a prison term of 204 months that the defendant received in May in U.S. District Court in Tulsa, Okla., on a conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Agee robbed the DAV store at 1201 E. Seventh St. armed with a handgun on Oct. 12, 2010. He reportedly made off with $350 and change, but his image was captured on surveillance video and a witness reported seeing him get into a white pickup truck with a Missouri license plate number that the witness was able to provide police.
The plate checked to a known associate of the defendant in Springfield, and investigators learned that Agee had been seen in Downstream Casino about 24 hours before the robbery wearing a hat and shoes that matched the robber’s attire. According to the affidavit, Agee was spotted again at the casino two days after the robbery and observed going to a vehicle in the parking lot and changing into a shirt that matched the robber’s shirt.
Officers tipped off to his whereabouts tried to stop a Pontiac Grand Am that he was driving as he left the parking lot and a chase ensued in which he is accused of almost running down Mike Hobson, a now-retired lieutenant of the Joplin Police Department who was attempting to deploy tire-deflating sticks.
Agee fled through Newton County into Oklahoma before abandoning the vehicle and getting away on foot. He was caught by federal marshals about three weeks later near the Hard Rock Casino in Tulsa and extradited to Missouri.
He still faces charges in Newton County for the alleged assault on Hobson and resisting arrest, and on other felony counts in Greene County.
Threat
Stephen Agee pointed a gun at employees of the DAV Thrift Store in Joplin and demanded that they “open the registers or die,” according to a probable cause affidavit.
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