WESTFIELD – An incarcerated Springfield man has been arraigned for the February armed robbery of the MoFroYo store in the Little River Plaza.
Det. Sgt. Stephen K. Dickinson, reports, in a document filed in Westfield District Court, that on Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013, he was summoned to frozen yogurt store after employees reported that the store had been robbed by an armed man.
Dickinson found that three employees had been working in the store and there were no customers inside when a Hispanic man with tattoos in “unique Asian writing” on both sides of his neck entered.
The employees said that the man kept his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt as he asked about a public bathroom and inquired about the price of frozen yogurt before saying something like “you gonna give all the money you have in the drawer, I have a gun and it’s not worth getting shot in the head.”
The employees all agreed that the man never produced a gun but kept his hands in his pockets.
The suspect ordered two of the employees to the floor and told the manager to give him the money from the cash register.
The manager opened the register and put it on the counter but the robber demanded that he take out the money, which the manager said totaled about $280, and hand it to him.
Once he had the money, the robber told the manager to join the employees on the floor of the store and fled.
Dickinson reports that the manager said that the suspect, who he said did not wear gloves, had briefly picked up an ice cream cup and Dickinson found that there was no reason to believe anybody else had handled the cup.
Dickinson took the cup as evidence and sent it to the State Police crime lab in Springfield for processing,
In June a trooper from the lab reported that a fingerprint on the cup matched that of Angel Gomez, 27, of 67 Fordham St., Springfield.
Dickinson found that Gomez is a Hispanic man with “unique scribe writing tattoo (sic) on both sides of his neck” and acquired a photograph of him.
Armed with the photo, Dickinson made up a photo array which he showed to the manager who “immediately picked Angel Gomez out” of the stack of photos and said that he had no doubts that he was the robber.
Dickinson applied for a warrant and found that in June Gomez had been incarcerated at the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow for another offense and that he was scheduled to be released in January, 2014.
Gomez was summoned to Westfield District Court yesterday where he was arraigned before Judge Philip A. Contant and held in lieu of $25,000 cash bail pending a Sept. 5 hearing.
