ANGEL LUIS GOMEZ
WESTFIELD – A Springfield man who pleaded guilty to the armed robbery of the MoFroYo frozen yogurt store in the Little River Plaza will pay no tangible penalty for the crime.
City police responded to a report of an armed robbery at the store early in the afternoon of Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013, and the three store employees told the officers how they had been robbed by a Hispanic man who claimed to have a gun but never produced it.
The store manager later told police that he had surrendered about $280 to the robber.
Det. Sgt. Steven K. Dickinson was involved in the investigation and found that the suspect had picked up an ice cream cup before he staged the robbery. The cup was sent to the crime lab for examination but Dickinson reports that the first inspection did not yield a fingerprint.
Detectives were able to persuade a city resident who works in the state police crime lab to apply his talents to the cup and a fingerprint was discovered.
The print was matched to Angel Luis Gomez, 28, then of 67 Fordham St., Springfield, who was then incarcerated in the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow, having been arrested for an armed robbery with a knife in Springfield.
Arraigned in Westfield District Court for armed robbery in August, the charge was dismissed in October after Gomez was indicted and arraigned in Hampden Superior Court for the same crime.
Dickinson reports that, on March 13, Gomez pleaded guilty to both the armed robberies he had been accused of.
He was sentenced to a 4-5 year term for the Springfield robbery and to a 2-3 year term for the robbery at the MoFroYo store.
In each case, Gomez will be on probation for two years after his release.
He was credited with the 319 days he had been incarcerated pending adjudication but the terms – both of incarceration and probation – were ordered to be served concurrently.
Therefore, when Gomez completes the longer term imposed for the Springfield robbery he will also have served the shorter term imposed for his crime in Westfield, effectively allowing him to escape consequences for that crime entirely.
