Oklahoma man gets 10 years for Walmart parking lot robbery, jail assault

Apr. 13—A judge assessed an Oklahoma man 10 years in prison Monday when he pleaded guilty to robbing a customer in the parking lot of a Walmart store in Joplin and the beating of another inmate in jail.

Joel J. McGuire, 32, of rural Guthrie, Oklahoma, changed his pleas to guilty in Jasper County Circuit Court on charges of first-degree robbery and third-degree assault in a plea agreement calling for concurrent sentences 10 years on the robbery and four years for the assault.

Judge Dean Dankelson accepted the plea deal and assessed McGuire concurrent terms of 10 years and four years.

McGuire was the driver of a vehicle in which accomplice Alyssa M. Guevara, 31, of Bernice, Oklahoma, fled the parking lot of the Walmart at 1501 S. Range Line Road on Jan. 3, 2017, after robbing Joan Stephens, 54, of Joplin, of her purse at gunpoint.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol later stopped the suspects' vehicle at a toll booth on Interstate 44 and arrested the pair while still in possession of items taken from Stephens.

Guevara pleaded guilty in July of last year to first-degree robbery and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

McGuire's assault conviction pertains to an attack Jan. 21 on Siid Mohamed, a fellow inmate of the defendant at the Jasper County Jail in Carthage. A probable-cause affidavit states that Mohamed was on a phone in a pod of the jail where inmates are allowed to receive calls when he was jumped from behind by McGuire.

The affidavit states that Mohamed was hit in the back of the head and his mouth multiple times and left bleeding on the floor of a hallway between pods. He told jail staff that whoever attacked him was calling him "a rat."

McGuire was charged when a review of jail video surveillance showed it was he who attacked Mohamed, according to the affidavit.