Lawrence Dominique Franklin, Armed Bank Robbery, Georgia 2023

State: Georgia
Category: Violent Crime
Source: <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdga/pr/statewide-robbery-spree-lands-columbus-man-federal-prison" style="color:#cc0000;" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">DOJ Press Release ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Â Ã¢â‚¬â€

A Columbus man who terrorized Georgia communities with a string of armed robberies has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

Lawrence Dominique Franklin, 37, of Columbus, Ga., was sentenced to 240 months in prison by U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. after pleading guilty to Armed Bank Robbery, Bank Robbery, and Interference with Commerce by Robbery, according to David H. Estes, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia.

Franklin’s prison term will be followed by five years of supervised release. There is no parole in the federal system.

Franklin’s violent crime spree began on November 25, 2019, when he entered a Wells Fargo Bank in Columbus, Ga. wearing a construction worker vest, pointed a gun at the manager, and threatened to ‘blast’ several bank employees. Before departing, he stole thousands of dollars from multiple teller stations.

Three days later, he robbed a Dollar General store in Savannah, forced an employee to open the store safe, and fled with a large amount of cash. The next day, he robbed a Wells Fargo Bank in Newnan, Ga., again by revealing a gun from underneath a construction worker vest and threatening to shoot bank employees.

Franklin told law enforcement officials that, to facilitate his crimes, he kidnapped a woman and threatened to hurt her children unless she drove him from one robbery to the next and helped him escape.

Within three days of the Newnan robbery, Franklin was arrested in Atlanta. After grand juries returned separate federal indictments for the robberies, the cases were consolidated for plea and sentencing in the Southern District of Georgia.

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