Devonte Aaron Dillard, Armed Robbery, TX 2015

Devonte Aaron Dillard, 24, is locked up for 240 months after being sentenced yesterday by U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay for his role in four violent armed robberies across Dallas, Mesquite, and Garland in 2015. The federal prison term — two decades behind bars — follows a guilty plea entered in July 2016, marking the fall of a serial stick-up man who left blood and fear in his wake.

Dillard pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery and one count of using, carrying, brandishing, and discharging a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence. Judge Lindsay handed down 120 months on each count, to be served consecutively — a clear signal that federal prosecutors and the judiciary won’t tolerate repeat gunpoint assaults on small businesses and workers just trying to earn a paycheck.

The spree began April 17, 2015, when Dillard and ringleader Michael Deshun Holland, Jr., 22, stormed into the Chevron Food Mart on Highway 80 in Mesquite. Tatiana Renee Sallie, 20, waited in the getaway car while Dillard pulled a firearm and shot a store employee during the robbery. The wound could’ve been fatal. It wasn’t the last time a worker would be targeted.

Just weeks later, on May 8, Dillard, Holland, Colby Cole Ditto, 21, and Sallie hit a 7-Eleven on Interstate Highway 30 in Mesquite — again brandishing a gun and robbing the register. On May 12, the crew struck two more stores in one night: the Gus Thomasson Road 7-Eleven, where an employee was struck in the head with a firearm, and later the Northwest Highway 7-Eleven in Garland, where another worker was assaulted during the heist.

Three co-conspirators — Ditto, Sallie, and Trenton Kyle Sirkel, 21 — have already pleaded guilty and now await sentencing. Holland, the alleged mastermind, is set to face trial February 6, 2017, before Judge Lindsay. Prosecutors are expected to lean heavily on Dillard’s testimony and the paper trail of planning messages between the group, which laid bare their intent to terrorize convenience store clerks for quick cash.

The case was jointly investigated by the Mesquite Police Department, Garland Police Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jamie Hoxie and Keith Robinson led the prosecution, ensuring Dillard’s reign of crime ended not on the streets, but in a federal cell.