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2 enter pleas in February mugging

Spotsylvania men plead guilty to mugging at Four-Mile Fork Shopping Center

BY ELLEN BILTZ

Date published: 12/18/2007

BY ELLEN BILTZ

Two Spotsylvania County men pleaded guilty to robbery yesterday in a February mugging in the Four-Mile Fork Shopping Center.

One of them, Antwan Benthall, 19, also pleaded guilty to two counts of malicious wounding for using pepper spray on the two men who were mugged.

Benthall faced nine charges going in to the trial yesterday and pleaded to the robbery and malicious wounding counts after testimony from three witnesses. The six other charges were then dismissed.

He will be sentenced in February and could receive up to five years on each wounding charge and life in prison for robbery.

Gerald Green, 19, took a plea agreement before his trial began, admitting to one robbery charge. The other six charges were dropped.

At the urging of prosecutor Matt Lowery, the judge sentenced Green to five years in prison, with all but the time already served suspended because Green cooperated with police in the investigation.

The two men who were robbed testified yesterday that they had left a check-cashing store at the shopping center when two masked men in sweatshirts approached them at their car and demanded money.

"They had bandannas on their face, outlaw-style," said George Kelly, 25, who was about to get into the car when he was approached.

He said after his friend, Doug Rowe, handed over the cash he had just received, a man pepper-sprayed them and left.

Kelly said he was able to get the fleeing car's license-plate number using his right eye, which was not sprayed. Police used that to track down Benthall and Green.

Police also arrested the man who was driving the car that the two suspects fled in, but those charges were later dropped.

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Date published: 12/18/2007

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