TULALIP — We told you back in May about a scary robbery at the Coach store at the outlet malls on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. Two women were held at gunpoint and forced to open the store’s safe. The robbers bound the women’s hands with plastic zip-ties and tied them to a shelf. They thanked the women for their cooperation before high-tailing it out of the store with $20,000.
Now the rookie robbers, a pair of first-time offenders, are headed to prison for more than seven years.
Michael Hodgen and Jeremy Laviguer, both 26, recently told a judge that they were behind the May 27 heist. Even without criminal history, the Everett men are looking at a long stretch behind bars. Kiss your 20s and part of your 30s goodbye, fellas.
It took Tulalip police about two weeks to catch up with the pair. In surveillance videos, they noticed a white Honda Accord in the area during the same time as the robbery. The car was registered to Laviguer, whose girlfriend happened to work at the store.
Police confronted Laviguer who copped to the robbery and gave up his stash of the money. Part of the cash had been divided and a note with the name of his girlfriend was found on one of the stacks. Laviguer insisted his girl is not involved. Hodgen said she gave them a map of the store layout. She has not been charged with a crime in connection with the robbery.
From Laviguer, the trail led to Hodgen, who didn’t do himself any favors by posting pictures on his MySpace page of him holding a silver handgun. The gun looked like the one used in the robbery.
Sometimes they make it so easy.
He eventually admitted to being the second robber and turned over his take, which he’d been hiding in a discarded in-sink garbage disposal that was sitting in his backyard. Huh?
Prosecutors charged the duo with first-degree robbery while armed with firearms. The weapons earn Hodgen and Laviguer a mandatory five-year prison sentence on top of the standard sentence for first-degree robbery.
Hodgen is to be sentenced Monday and Laviguer is scheduled for early next year.
Kaleena Sanders, the suspected getaway driver and lookout (and mother of Laviguer’s child), has trial scheduled in January.
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