On the one hand, Jonathan Russell, the 19-year-old Shelton man sentenced Monday to serve five years in prison for the robbery of a local convenience store, is like a lot of defendants — a substance abuse problem drove him to commit his crimes.
But on the other, Russell is different — still in his teens, he has time to turn his life around.
“Mr. Russell’s here today in the situation that he’s in due to substance abuse,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Charles Stango in court. “Hopefully he’ll be able to live a productive adulthood. He’s still a very young man.”
The situation Stango referenced was Russell’s sentencing Monday before Judge Richard Arnold at Superior Court in Milford on a litany of charges for which Russell had taken a plea deal.
The most serious were related to the December 18 robbery of the Buck Stop convenience store on Shelton Avenue. In that case he pleaded under the Alford doctrine to first-degree robbery and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit 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 had also pleaded guilty to third- and fifth-degree larceny in connection with thefts from motor vehicles in Shelton in January.
A second man accused in the robbery, Nicholos Cowell, is due back in court Wednesday.
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.
Russell has been held on bond since his arrest in the robbery Feb. 2.
He also has a pending case in Bridgeport Superior Court in which he faces five felony burglary counts, but 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.
After the sentencing, those who had attended the hearing for Russell declined to comment.
Inside the courtroom during the proceeding, his lawyer, Christian Bujdud, acknowledged his client’s history of substance abuse but told Judge Arnold that Russell’s life would be taking a new direction.
“He’s a young man. He has time to think about what has brought him to this day,” Bujdud said, adding that based on more than two decades of experience dealing with clients in criminal cases, “He will not be in front of this court or any other court again.”
Judge Arnold imposed a 10-year prison sentence to be suspended after Russell serves five years behind bars — a sentence agreed to as part of the plea deal.
After Russell gets out of prison, he will be on probation for five years, during which Judge Arnold ordered him to undergo substance abuse evaluation and treatment and pay back more than $3,000 in restitution to various victims in the cases, among other conditions.
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.
