Armed Pharmacy Robbers Receive Tough Sentences
FORT LAUDERDALE (CBS4) -- Two men convicted of robbing three overnight drugstores in South Florida have been sentenced for their crimes.
Timothy "Back Arms" Johnson, 36, was sentenced Friday to life in prison.
Deitrick "Real Deal" Johnson, 24, was sentenced to 50-years in prison. The judge decided against a life term for Deitrick because he did not have a record of violent crimes.
Outside the courtroom, Timothy Johnson's girlfriend Octavia Fuller said, "I don't feel he was sentenced right."
"To see him sentenced for something he didn't do with no evidence, it wasn't fair." Fuller describes Johnson as a good father who loves his three children.
Both men, who are not related, were convicted in December of eight counts of armed robbery for holding up pharmacies in Lauderhill, Margate and Coconut Creek on Oct. 8, 2007.
During the robberies, the men would enter the stores wearing Halloween or ski masks, jump the counter and force employees at gunpoint to empty the cash registers and safes.
A third man, Gerald "Dread" Joshua, 30, is already serving a 12-year prison sentence for the robbery of a Deerfield Beach pharmacy. When Joshua was arrested he implicated the Johnsons.
Timothy Johnson was once considered a "person of interest" in the murder of Broward Sheriff's Sgt. Chris Reyka who was gunned down in August 2007 in the parking lot of a 24-hour Walgreen's store.
As CBS4 News reported previously, an unidentified woman told a private investigator that she overheard Timothy Johnson make a phone call after Reyka's murder.
The woman said, "Tim Johnson called and said that the robbery didn't go right and somebody killed the police officer."
Sheriff Al Lamberti said Friday that Deitrick Johnson's "name has been mentioned in Reyka's murder among other people."
But Johnson's lawyer dismisses any connection.
"He has from day one denied that. I don't believe he was involved at all. The cell phone records from that month that connect him to the drugstore robberies, indicate his cell phone was not present at the time of the murder," said defense attorney Michael Gottlieb.
Gottlieb is appealing Timothy Johnson's conviction. He says Johnson may have a shot at a new trial.
He was never charged because ballistics tests on guns belonging to Johnson and recovered by BSO divers from a Pompano Beach canal did not match the gun used to shoot Reyka.
