Family Dollar robbery suspect sentenced
By Melody Brown-Peyton
Published in News on May 28, 2018 10:38 PM
A Goldsboro man was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison last week for his part in a May 2016 robbery at the Family Dollar on Wayne Memorial Drive.
Devon Waters, 38, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit interference with commerce by robbery and discharging a firearm and aiding and abetting.
According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of North Carolina, Waters and co-defendant O'Brien Shaquille Hooker forced two employees, who were closing the store for the night, back into the store at gunpoint. Hooker brandished a handgun and forced the employees to get on the floor.
Waters then ordered a female employee to open the safe. When the employee had difficulty, he fired a shot at her feet and threatened to kill her.
When a Goldsboro Police Department vehicle pulled into the parking lot, the two men fired shots at an officer and fled the scene.
Waters got away with $800 in cash along with cigarettes.
When Waters is released from prison, he will have to serve five years of supervised probation.
Hooker previously pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison. After serving time, he will be on probation for five years.
"Today the court imposed a sentence of more than 20 years on an offender who thought so little of human life that he shot at an innocent store clerk and at members of our law enforcement community for $800 and some cigarettes.," said Robert Higdon Jr., United States attorney for Eastern District of North Carolina.
"This sentence should be a warning to those who would commit violent acts, that we will pursue you and we will see you removed from the communities you are victimizing and terrorizing."