A West Haven man was sentenced to serve 18 years in prison for for perpetrating five stick-up robberies, including three in the lower Naugatuck Valley.
Anthony Simons, 44, had pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree robbery in July, when he also pleaded guilty to being a persistent dangerous felony offender.
He was sentenced Friday (Sept. 27) at Superior Court in Milford.
Judge Frank Iannotti handed down the 18-year prison sentence in accordance with a plea deal between Simons’ public defender and prosecutors.
Simons was arrested Dec. 10, 2012 — and has been jailed since then — in connection with the knife-point robbery of a Guilford convenience store and was soon established as a suspect in a slew of similar stick-ups throughout the region.
Those included several cases in the Valley:
- The Nov. 30, 2012 knife-point robbery of a Citgo gas station at 442 River Road, Shelton,
- A knife-point robbery of the XTra Mart convenience store on Ansonia’s Wakelee Avenue Dec. 3, 2012,
- The Dec. 7, 2012 stick-up of a Dunkin’ Donuts on Route 34 in Seymour.
Simons pleaded guilty to charges of first-degree robbery in each of those cases, in addition to two Milford cases, on July 3, 2013, according to a clerk at Superior Court in Milford.
As part of his plea deal, prosecutors dropped robbery charges against Simons in connection with three cases out of Milford and a Dec. 7, 2012 robbery in Derby.
At his sentencing Friday, Simons blamed the robbery spree on an addiction to drugs, according to the New Haven Register.
The 18-year sentence Judge Iannotti handed down Friday will run concurrent to a 20-year sentence he received at Superior Court in New Haven Thursday (Sept. 26).
In those cases, Simons pleaded guilty to a dozen counts of first-degree robbery in connection with robberies in Waterbury, Naugatuck, Middletown, Stratford, Wallingford, Meriden, Bristol, Cheshire, and Guilford between October 2012 and January 2013.