(KNSI) – On Monday, the Stearns County Attorney’s Office charged a 39-year-old Waite Park man with first-degree aggravated robbery in connection to an August 2020 robbery in St. Cloud.
Jonathon Demetris Herring was already in the Stearns County Jail on other, unrelated charges when he was charged with first-degree aggravated robbery.
On August 21st, 2020 just before noon, the St. Cloud Police Department says officers were sent to Security Coin and Pawn Shop on the 600 block of St. Germain Street West on the report of a robbery. According to the SCPD’s original news release, three men entered the store and approached two employees, who were behind the counter. One man left, and the two others each grabbed an employee and punched them. They then allegedly went behind the counter, took several jewelry items and fled. Officers weren’t able to find the suspects at the scene.
The two employees, both in their 70s, were taken to St. Cloud Hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.
According to Herring’s criminal complaint, the victims described the three suspects as Black men. One man was described as middle-aged, wearing all-white Middle Eastern dress, purple gloves and a white PPE mask. The two other men were described as younger and wearing shorter, darker clothes. Surveillance footage from the scene, the complaint says, captured images of the man in white and another man who was running away wearing gray athletic pants, a gray shirt and a New York Yankees hat.
One day after the robbery, according to the criminal complaint, an SCPD officer after someone reported finding jewelry tags at a dumpster in the 400 block of 8th Avenue South. Police say they found several security tags, black Nike sweatpants, a pair of Champion sweatpants, a red, gray and blue Champion T-shirt, part of of a ring display case, a white sleeveless shirt, a used surgical mask, a pair of purple gloves and more. The complaint says the Champion clothing items matched the clothing seen on one of the suspects at the scene of the robbery.
The department submitted evidence to the Minnesota Bureau of Apprehension for analysis, including DNA samples from the two victims, the purple gloves, the Nike sweatpants, the surgical mask and the Champion T-shirt. Two reports from the BCA found that there was not enough genetic information on the mask or the T-shirt to find any DNA profiles. However, DNA from the right-hand purple glove matched one of the victim’s profiles, and DNA from the left-hand glove lined up with Herring’s DNA profile, which was in the Minnesota Convicted Offender DNA Database.
SCPD says Herring was convicted in Benton County for second-degree aggravated robbery in 2018.
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