Norfolk Man Sentenced for Colonial Heights Armed Robbery

A Norfolk man was sentenced to over 14.5 years in prison for his role in a violent armed robbery of a Sprint Store in Colonial Heights.

Ronnell Kareen Levon Johnson, 28, and his co-conspirator, Tajh Rodgers, 32, of Norfolk, traveled from the Norfolk area to Colonial Heights to commit an armed robbery of a Sprint Store on January 7, 2019.

During the robbery, Rodgers brandished a loaded .40 caliber Ruger semi-automatic pistol and forced two employees into a back room of the store, where he let Johnson in through the back entrance.

Johnson entered the store and started gathering Sprint Store merchandise into a bag. Johnson and Rodgers then held the employees hostage in the back room, and attempted to tie up both victims while they completed the robbery.

Due to a time-delay lock on the store’s safe, the defendants had to wait approximately 20 minutes for the safe to open. During that time, two separate customers entered the front of the store. Rodgers let one of the employees assist each customer, along with a warning that the employee would be killed if he tried to alert anyone about the crime.

The employee followed those instructions and the final customer left without incident. Minutes after the second customer departed, the time-delay lock on the safe opened, allowing Johnson and Rodgers to steal dozens of cellular telephones and other store merchandise valued at approximately $25,000.

Johnson was sentenced today to 175 months in prison. Rodgers, who pleaded guilty to the Colonial Heights armed robbery and three charges of possessing a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking, was sentenced to 28 years imprisonment on January 9, 2020.

The case was prosecuted as part of the joint federal, state, and local Project Safe Neighborhoods Program.

A copy of this press release is located on the website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

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