- May 4, 2024
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Rebecca Crowley was working alone at Sharps Discount Liquor on October 30, 2011. It was morning, and customers were few. Just after 10 a.m., a man came in wearing in a motorcycle helmet, a leather jacket and black gloves.
He walked around the store before approaching her, asking where he could find a certain brand of liquor. She pointed to a corner, and he walked in the direction he indicated. Moments later, he called to her. He couldn’t find it, he said.
When Crowley walked over to help him, he grabbed her, waved a gun in her face, forced her to the cash register and emptied it. Then, he pulled her by the hair to the back of the store, bound her using zip ties and left.
All she saw was his eyes. They were tiger eyes, she said, coldly bright and piercing.
On Thursday afternoon, Crowley sat in court and watched Jacques Roland being pronounced guilty, as charged, of robbery with a weapon, a first-degree felony; grand theft, a third-degree felony; false imprisonment, a third-degree felony; and battery, a first-degree misdemeanor.
“For a year and a half, I’ve seen his eyes everywhere,” she said, wiping her eyes moments after the trial ended and Roland was handcuffed and taken away. “Everywhere. Now, maybe I’ll be able to get some sleep.”
Roland faces up to 30 years in prison for his first-degree felony charge and five years each for his third-degree felony charges. He will be sentenced in July.
After the robbery, Roland left the store with about $850 stuffed in his pockets and bolted into the woods behind the building. There, he threw away his leather jacket and gloves and went to a nearby Burger King.
Witnesses remembered him because he was sweaty, pacing. He held up the line when he asked staff if he could use the restaurant’s phone. His behavior helped deputies identify him as a suspect. Later, law enforcement found Roland’s discarded items in the woods. All of them tested positive for Roland’s DNA.
The case was prosecuted by Richard Price, who was assisted by Ben Fox.
The gun used, it turned out, was an air soft gun. But prosecutors urged the jury to convict Roland of robbery with a weapon, saying that its shots can still be dangerous and that it can be used as a blunt object.
"A weapon is any object that could be used to cause death or serious bodily harm, and it can," Fox said during closing argumetns. "And it's very much a firearm to the person who doesn't know it's not one."
Defense attorney Regina Nunnally said the DNA evidence was not sufficient for a verdict because Roland’s DNA was one of two contributors found on the evidence. She also pointed to inconsistencies in testimony, including conflicting descriptions of suspects given by witnesses, as well as a missing surveillance tape from Burger King, which investigators viewed but never retrieved.
Surveillance video from the liquor store was available, and was shown to jurors more than once during the trial.
She placed an empty chair before the jury and said there was a second suspect missing from the trial. If anything, Roland should be considered a suspect, not a perpetrator, Nunnally said.
“That chair over there is empty because the evidence doesn’t support the claim that there’s any other suspect,” Fox said.
It took jurors about 30 minutes to pronounce Roland guilty. The moment they did, a choked sob escaped from Crowley, who sat in the second row of the audience, clutching the hand of her former boss at Sharps.
But this time, her tears were happy ones. She’d cried a lot during the trial, especially when prosecution replayed footage of the robbery. She’d cried a lot as she relived the experience during depositions and during the year and a half before Roland’s case went to trial, knowing that he walked free after posting bond following his arrest.
“I’ve never felt so happy,” she said. “It’s like — I can’t explain it. I can’t wait to get on with my life.”
