OKLAHOMA CITY – A convicted felon from Purcell pleaded guilty to a New Year’s Day armed robbery of a Norman convenience store and squandering his loot at a nearby casino.
Kristopher Charles Shawn, 36, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court here recently to the Jan. 1, 2019, holdup, announced U.S. Attorney Timothy J. Downing.
Chief District Judge Timothy DeGiusti sentenced Shawn to seven-and-a-half years in federal prison and ordered him to pay $800 restitution to the store plus a $300 special assessment fee.
A federal grand jury indicted Shawn in March 2019 on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and brandishing the .380-caliber semi-automatic pistol “during and in relation to a crime of violence.”
After the robbery the store owners contacted police and shared online some images of the bandit that were obtained from the store’s surveillance system, Downing said. Subsequently the Norman Police Department and the Chickasaw Lighthorse Police Department located and arrested Shawn at the Riverwind Casino, where he spent the loot.
Criminal charges related to the robbery initially were filed in Cleveland County District Court but were dismissed in lieu of the federal counts, to which Shawn pleaded guilty.
After completing his federal prison sentence, Shawn will be on “supervised release” for four years. And he still faces a misdemeanor charge in McClain County District Court for an alleged theft from a Purcell shoe store in 2018, state court records indicate.
State court documents show Shawn pleaded guilty in 2016 to possession of heroin and received a three-year suspended sentence but was ordered to pay $1,060 plus the costs of his incarceration in the Cleveland County Jail and $40 per month for 21 months.