Teen charged with felonies accepts plea deal
Jun. 2—A Joplin teen facing an array of charges from two incidents a year ago pleaded guilty to burglary and attempted robbery charges Tuesday and received 120 days in the state's shock incarceration program.
Virtue D. Hill pleaded guilty in Jasper County Circuit Court to an attempted robbery, first-degree burglary, leaving the scene of an accident and resisting arrest in a plea deal dismissing additional felony counts of kidnapping, assault and armed criminal action.
Hill, who will turn 18 years old June 13, was 17 when the crimes were committed on June 17 and June 26 of last year.
In the robbery attempt June 17, court records state that he met a woman at an address on East Newman Road regarding an iPhone she had listed for sale on Facebook. When she refused to hand him the phone before he first gave her the money, he tackled her and tried to take it from her forcibly.
According to a probable-cause affidavit, when she started screaming and witnesses came to her aid, the defendant pulled out a pistol to ward them off. The entire incident was caught on a gas station's video surveillance system, according to the affidavit.
On June 26, Hill led police on a pursuit that began when an officer tried to stop a vehicle he was driving at 15th Street and Connecticut Avenue for traffic violations.
He purportedly ran a red light and rammed another vehicle, eluding the officer, and then abandoned the vehicle at 26th Street and Kansas Avenue, taking off on foot.
He entered a residence in the 1400 block of East 19th Street where he confronted a male occupant and held him at gunpoint while grabbing the victim's phone and using it to log on to a Facebook account and call someone to come to get him.
But he left the phone behind, and police were able to identify him as the user of the Facebook account and arrest him later the same day.
