A Shelton man will go to prison for five years after pleading guilty to robbing a Shelton gas station and breaking into cars.
Jonathan Russell, 19, formerly of Richard Boulevard, pleaded guilty before Judge Richard Arnold Monday at Superior Court in Milford.
A plea deal between Prosecutor Charles Stango and Russell’s lawyer, Christian Bujdud, calls for a 10-year prison sentence to be suspended after Russell serves five years behind bars, followed by five years of probation.
A second man accused in the robbery, Nicholos Cowell, was offered a plea deal in the case last month. He is due back in court June 18 to accept or reject the offer. 
Police say that in addition to robbing the Buck Stop with Cowell in December, Russell burglarized several motor vehicles in Shelton and stole items from them.
In court Monday, Russell pleaded guilty under the Alford doctrine to first-degree robbery. Under Alford, a defendant does not admit all the facts in the case but concedes there is enough evidence for a conviction at trial.
Russell also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery in the Buck Stop case. In addition, he pleaded guilty to single counts of third- and fifth-degree larceny in connection to the motor vehicle burglaries.
Russell has been held on bond since his arrest in the robbery Feb. 2. He will return to Milford court to be sentenced Aug. 20.
He also has a pending case in Bridgeport Superior Court in which he faces five felony burglary counts, but Bujdud and Stango said in court Monday that he will likely plead guilty in that case and receive a prison sentence that will run at the same time as the sentence Russell will receive in the Shelton case.
The Robbery
Police say that on the night of Dec. 18, Russell and Cowell dressed in black hoodies, black ski masks and black gloves and told a friend they were going to “do something to get money.”
They returned 45 minutes later, with about $1,300 in cash, according to warrants used to charge the two men.
Police claim that at about 11 p.m., the two went into the Shelton Buck Stop on Shelton Avenue, and robbed the shop at knife-point.
Those details were put together in a police investigation involving a neighborhood crime tip, a friend’s statement and search warrants executed at both men’s homes.
The thieves were unidentifiable in surveillance footage from the scene, according to the warrants. But the Buck Stop store clerk was able to see through the eye holes in their masks that they were white, and one had blue eyes.
Also, Shelton police had received calls from several residents in Huntington stating that two men dressed all in black were seen looking into cars in their neighborhoods on the night of Dec. 18. One resident wrote down a license plate number.
The Search
The license plate number belonged to a car owned by Cowell’s girlfriend. Police talked to her shortly after the robbery, asking where her car was the weekend of Dec. 18. The girlfriend said it was getting repaired.
A friend later told police that the friend had heard the two men talking about robbing the Buck Stop.
Police then received search warrants for the homes of Russell and Cowell.
At Cowell’s home, police found a red-handled Swiss Army knife. The knife used in the robbery was described by the clerk as a red-handled 4‑inch knife. Details in the court file don’t indicate if the Swiss Army knife is the same knife from the robbery.
In Russell’s Shelton home, they found five black hooded sweatshirts, as well as several items identified as having been stolen from parked, unlocked cars in town.
The Dec. 18 robbery was the second robbery at the Buck Stop in 10 days.
Police do not believe the two incidents are connected. The suspects in the first robbery were incarcerated at the time of the second robbery.
