A Darby man already serving a 4-8 year state prison sentence for a December 2023 robbery in Philadelphia pleaded guilty Monday to a January 2024 robbery in Upper Darby.
Emilio Freeman, 33, also pleaded to conspiracy to robbery, possession of a firearm without a license and possession of a firearm prohibited. Remaining charges including theft, assault and harassment were dismissed under the negotiated guilty plea worked out by Assistant District Attorney Jerry Rassias and defense counsel Donald Havens.
Co-defendant Tyree Brown, 38, Upper Darby, is facing identical charges. He is represented by defense attorney Jeff Gold and is scheduled for a status conference July 28.
According to an affidavit of probable cause written by Upper Darby Detective Kevin Gamber:
Police were dispatched to a convenience store at 7300 Marshall Road at about 8 p.m. Jan. 2, 2024, for a report of a robbery with a firearm. Dispatch said a caller reported two males armed with handguns, but further information could not be gleaned due to a language barrier.
Arriving officers viewed video footage that showed one suspect wearing camouflage pants and a red Nike hooded sweatshirt with blue surgical mask, armed with a handgun. That man did not appear to be wearing gloves and had tattoos on the backs of both hands.
The second suspect was identified as a light-skinned Black man wearing a gray jacket with a black mask, blue latex gloves and black Adidas sweatpants with an orange stripe. He was armed with a silver revolver.
Officer Inderbir Randhawa translated for the victims, who said the men entered the store brandishing firearms and took a box of lottery scratch-off tickets, along with $500. Gamber and Detective Gerald Pucci reviewed surveillance that supported that statement.
Police determined the men fled in a white Dodge Durango that they had parked by a nearby alley. The vehicle was spotted by license plate readers heading toward Philadelphia at 8:42 p.m.
At 2:11 a.m. on Jan. 3, Officer Rachael Keenan advised dispatch that she was behind the suspect Durango. Officer Luke McCann responded to assist, but the Dodge fled on Market Street into Philadelphia when Keenan attempted a traffic stop.
Officers pursued the vehicle until it eventually came to a stop on the 2300 block of Market Street in Philadelphia and some of the occupants jumped out and ran.
Officer Michael Hahn ran after a person wearing the same clothing as the light-skinned man in the robbery video, later identified as Freeman. Hahn was eventually able to take Freeman into custody.
During the chase, Freeman dropped a black backpack containing a large number of scratch-off tickets. Also inside the bag were blue latex gloves. Hahn also recovered a loaded Smith and Wesson .38 Special handgun from Freeman’s jacket.
Officer James Fagan, who had also been involved in the vehicle pursuit, was meanwhile taking the Durango driver into custody. That man was identified as Brown.
A Black woman in the front passenger seat was identified as the vehicle owner. A firearm was also visible in the Durango.
Brown was wearing identical camouflaged pants and shoes worn by the man wearing the red Nike sweatshirt in the robbery video, though he was wearing a white sweatshirt at the time of his arrest.
A later search of the Durango revealed the red Nike sweatshirt, as well as a .40 caliber Glock and several more lottery tickets.
The Dodge owner claimed she lent Brown her vehicle and was at work at the time of the robbery. She said she had fallen asleep in the passenger seat after he picked her up from work after midnight, and that she was awakened by his erratic driving during the pursuit and had pleaded with him to pull over.
Freeman later identified himself in still images from the surveillance video as the person in the gray jacket and Brown as the person in the red Nike sweatshirt. Brown refused to cooperate.
Sentencing for Freeman is scheduled for Aug. 8 before Common Pleas Court Judge G. Michael Green, though Rassias and Havens have already agreed that any sentence he received would run concurrent to the sentence in the Philadelphia case.