This weekend you are updated on the long prison sentences for two would-be jewelry store robbers whose two partners were shot to death by the shop owner.
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Story:
Murder Counts for Alleged Would-Be Robber, 2 Lookouts and Getaway Driver in Blown Heist Where Jeweler Killed 2 Baddies
Update: Sentences of 30 years to life in state prison were handed Friday to two men convicted last month of “provocative act murder”–the legal theory that their participation in a botched jewelry store robbery led to the deaths of two of their accomplices, who were shot to death by the shop owner. Alan Keith Hunter, 43, of Moreno Valley, was a lookout and he and James Stephan Paschall, 44, of Gardena, drove getaway vehicles in the June 24, 2011, would-be heist with four others of Monaco Jewelers on Doheny Park Road in San Juan Capistrano. Robert Earl Avery was armed when he joined fellow 39-year-old Desmond Brown and Eddie Clark Sr., 53, of Los Angeles, in entering the store, where Avery walked out of the showroom and into the work area, pulled out the firearm and attacked the store manager, pointing the gun at the man's head and chest. The store owner then shot Avery three times and Brown three times as he was running toward him. Both Brown and Avery died at the scene. Clark and George Anthony Boozer, a 36-year-old Apple Valley resident who was also part of the job, previously pleaded guilty, and Clark's 30-year-old son and co-defendant Eddie Clark Jr. is expected to receive a plea
deal as part of the resolution of his father's case, Senior Deputy District Attorney Scott Simmons told City News Service. Since Paschall, a third striker, and Hunter, a second-striker, are convicted armed bank robbers, they could have faced much lengthier prison sentences, Simmons said. But Orange County Superior Court Judge Patrick Donahue praised the defendants for being “gentlemen'' during the trial and noted they were not present for the shootings and did not do anything violent in their previous felonies to justify the maximum allowable sentence.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.