A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a man to 12 years in prison for a series of robberies that included a bank holdup, an armed robbery of a mobile phone store, and an attempted robbery that was stopped when an employee took refuge behind a locked door.
U.S. District Judge Henry E. Autrey imposed the sentence on 42-year-old Kentrell Jones, who admitted carrying out multiple crimes across Jennings and St. Louis in early 2022. According to court records, Jones robbed a bank in Jennings on Jan. 20, 2022, by handing a note to a teller and suggesting he had a firearm. Less than a month later, on Feb. 14, he entered a mobile phone store on South Grand Boulevard in St. Louis and demanded cash at gunpoint. The employee escaped into a bathroom and locked the door, preventing Jones from completing the robbery.
Jones then traveled to a second mobile phone store on Kingshighway Boulevard, where he brandished a firearm, stole cell phones and money, and fled the scene. He later pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to robbery, attempted robbery, bank robbery, and brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence…