Thrusday, January 14, 1999
'Good kids' will do time for pawn shop armed robbery
BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON — The pawn shop robbers boasted about their good grades and athletic ability, and they brought out friends and family members — even a local priest — to attest that they were just the kind of young men to turn their lives around.
In the end, those reputations didn't matter much. Kenton Circuit Judge Steven Jaeger ruled Wednesday that they should be locked up. Any less punishment would send the wrong message, he said.
Former Simon Kenton High School friends Matt Johnson, Brandon Crouthers and Travis Evans asked for compassion and understanding at their sentencing Wednesday. They all pleaded guilty to robbing the Quick Cash pawn shop in Taylor Mill on April 9, 1998. Mr. Evans drove the car while the other two went in with guns and pointed them at the clerk. The ordeal ended with Mr. Johnson seriously injured by a bullet from a gun that the clerk kept under the counter.
“You make your grave, you lay in it,” clerk George Waters said after court, explaining that he has sympathy for the three families but not for the robbers. “They're still punks.”
He shook his head when attorneys and supporters of the three referred to them as good kids.
Mr. Evans was 18 when he was arrested. He was sentenced to 10 years in the pawn shop robbery and an additional five for a previous burglary at a neighbor's house in Erlanger. Among his supporters was the Rev. Bill Cleves, president of Thomas More.
Mr. Johnson turned 18 between the offense and his sentencing. That made him eligible to be designated a youthful offender, which allows him to be sent temporarily to a juvenile detention facility instead of an adult prison. He'll be back before the judge in July, at which time he could go to an adult prison to serve the rest of his 20-year sentence or get an alternative sentence, such as probation or shock probation.
Mr. Crouthers, of Independence, who is 17, was sent to the custody of the state Department of Juvenile Justice, which will keep him in a juvenile facility until he turns 18 in June. After that, he'll return to Judge Jaeger's courtroom for re-sentencing as an adult.
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