Jury convicts man in jewelry store robbery

By Karen Blackledge
The Daily Item

June 11, 2009 07:12 am

— DANVILLE — A Montour County jury took two hours and 40 minutes to find a Philadelphia man guilty of robbing a Danville jewelry store in July, of criminal conspiracy and theft.
The jury of seven women and five men reached a verdict at 8:40 p.m. Wednesday following the daylong trial. It found Eric J. Smith, 38, guilty of robbery with bodily injury, but not guilty of robbery with serious bodily injury.
The robbery charge and criminal conspiracy each carry up to 10 years in jail. Theft is a misdemeanor charge.
The jury came back twice to ask President Judge Scott Naus questions about the definitions of the robbery and unlawful restraint charges.
After the verdict was read, Smith, the only defense witness, had no comment.
His attorney, Michael Rudniski, said, “Obviously the jury reviewed everything with their questions.”
Smith allegedly pepper-sprayed and used a stun gun on two employees and a customer, and duct-taped the customer, during the robbery at Ryan’s Jewelers, 267 Mill St., on July 14.
The armed robbery was believed to the first in Danville in 15 years.
A bag with $163,000 in Rolex watches, bracelets, necklaces and rings was left behind after a Danville police officer arrived.
Smith, who has been jailed since the robbery, testified that a Caucasian woman committed the robbery. He said the woman entered the shop ahead of him, that he heard women inside scream and that he was grabbed from behind and pepper-sprayed.
Smith said he heard a male voice in the shop. He later heard Danville police officer Gerard Zeidler Jr. enter and Smith said he told him: “I don’t know what is going on.”
The two employees and customer in the shop testified they were terrified during the robbery.
Smith said he ran out of the shop to try to apprehend the Caucasian woman who he says robbed the store. He said he was screaming for help to stop her light-colored car, and that she was wearing a gray suit.
He said he was in Danville that day after he, and a Mr. Wallace and his son, got lost traveling from Williamsport, where Smith was working, to Philadelphia. Smith said Wallace stopped his pickup truck on Mill Street so Smith could buy earrings for his daughter. Smith said he hasn’t seen Wallace since that day.
Zeidler testified the only conversation he had with Smith in the shop was repeatedly telling him to show him his hands.
“I told him don’t make me shoot you. That’s the last thing I would want to do in the line of duty,” said the officer who, despite his lungs burning because of the pepper spray, chased Smith along Rooney Avenue, Canal Street and tackled him along Route 54.
Smith said the store employees, a customer and a man along Mill Street were mistaken when they said they saw an African-American man and an African-American woman enter the store.
He said he didn’t have a can of pepper spray in his pocket when apprehended. An identical can was found in the jewelry store, Montour County District Attorney Robert Buehner Jr. said.
“I am not the person who committed that crime,” Smith said. “I actually tasted pepper spray.”
Where were the sunglasses witnesses said Smith was wearing? Rudniski asked the jury.
“No one could ID him except the officer,” the defense attorney said.
Buehner asked why the first thing Smith did while lost in Danville was to go to a jewelry store and asked why Smith’s friend hadn’t gone to look for him.
Earlier, jewelry store employee Linda Cavanaugh testified, “I thought my life was over” during the robbery.
Smith’s girlfriend, Melanie McDuffie, 44, of Sicklerville, was charged with the robbery and related offenses in March. Her preliminary hearing will be scheduled for sometime this summer.
A man across the street from Ryan’s testified he noticed something wasn’t right in the shop and alerted police.
A Ryan’s employee for six years, Cavanaugh said she and fellow worker Margie Hunsinger were getting ready to close the shop that day. Dr. Michelle Olson was at Ryan’s, picking up merchandise. Shop co-owner Kelly Green had left at about 5 p.m.
Cavanaugh testified an African-American man and an African-American woman entered in a “rushed manner and unusual for the normal type of customer.”
They abruptly came to the counter, with one spraying the three women with pepper spray.
“It took your breath away and made you bend over like you were going to vomit,” Cavanaugh said. “I couldn’t breathe. We were all screaming.”
“The man told us to shut up and get down. I was bent over and couldn’t see. It hurt so much I thought it was acid on my face. It was burning like on fire. I thought I was blinded.”
After Cavanaugh was hit with the stun gun, the man asked where the Rolexes were, she said. A sign outside the store indicates Ryan’s sells Rolex watches, she said. Cavanaugh said she was lying on the floor at the time and she didn’t know who he was addressing.
She then heard a commotion and assumed a policeman had entered because he was yelling, “Stop don’t make me shoot you” or “I don’t want to shoot you,” she said.
She remembers the man saying he didn’t have a weapon and a commotion in the back of the building.
She recalled the man wearing a ball cap low over his face, and sunglasses. The woman wore sunglasses, had black, short-cropped hair and was smartly dressed in a gray suit with a black T-shirt, she said.
Cavanaugh said she would not be able to recognize them.
The man was carrying a black duffle-type bag, she said. When Rudniski asked about the statement she gave police immediately after the robbery, that both people carried bags. She said that would be the case then.
Borough resident Joe Ozelek testified he was across the street from the jewelry shop and next to his car when he saw an African-American man carrying a black gym bag and an African-American woman walking along Mill Street.
He thought it unusual the man was wearing a black leather coat because it was warm that day.
“Things just looked a little funny,” he said.
After the two went into Ryan’s, he heard a scream and saw the man wave his right hand by his head.
Ozelek then ran to the nearby police station. He said he couldn’t identify the man carrying the bag.
Also testifying were Hunsinger, Olson, Zeidler, Danville police officer Joe Eister, a state trooper who photographed the scene and Green, the shop co-owner.
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