Prosecutors Thursday offered a plea deal to one of two suspects in a knife-point robbery at the Shelton Buck Stop on Dec. 18.
Senior Assistant States Attorney Charles Stango discussed the deal with Nicholos Cowell’s attorney behind closed doors at Superior Court in Milford.
The details of the proposal were not discussed publicly.
“There is a tentative offer,” Cowell’s attorney, Richard Silverstein, said during Cowell’s brief court hearing. “I want to speak to my client about it.”
Cowell is due back in court June 18 to give an answer.
His alleged accomplice, Jonathan Russell, 19, of Shelton, is scheduled to return to court June 4.
Both men were charged with first-degree robbery and fourth-degree larceny.
A message was left with Stango Thursday to find out whether Russell was offered a deal as well.
The Robbery
The night of Dec. 18, Russell and Cowell allegedly 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.
Russell is also facing several other burglary and larceny charges for the alleged car burglaries.
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.
