Robbery trio sentenced

Before a bullet shattered his left foot, Matthew Parker enjoyed dancing and running. Today, the 26-year-old Odessa man doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to walk again.

Routine activities, like showering and sleeping, have become cumbersome. Even going out to dinner is painful and frustrating.

Parker’s wheelchair kept him from physically taking the witness stand Tuesday during a sentencing hearing in Midland’s U.S. District Court. But it didn’t prevent him from testifying and recounting the attempted armed robbery that changed his life.

“It just hurts to do stuff,” Parker said, his voice quivering at times. “My injuries hurt like all the time.”

The three men who injured Parker June 4 in an attempted armed robbery and shootout in Odessa — Joshua Bell, 20, Preston Savell, 19, and Christopher Simmons, 20 — were sentenced Tuesday to 25 years and 11 months in federal prison. U.S. District Judge Rob Junell also ordered them to pay $30,154.63 in restitution to the victim.

All three pleaded guilty in August to charges of use of a firearm during a crime of violence, conspiracy to commit bank robbery and attempted bank robbery.

Parker, who was guarding an H&K Armored Services truck, was shot four times — once in each foot as well as in the right thigh and upper right chest — in an exchange of gunfire with Bell and Savell.

As Junell announced the sentence, the defendants’ families began to weep.

“I’m shocked by the age of the defendants — I’m also shocked by their conduct,” Junell said. “They do not seem to recognize the seriousness of the offense nor the sanctity of human life.”

After the sentencing, Parker said he was satisfied with Junell’s ruling.

“I’m pretty happy with it,” he said with a smile, one of his first of the afternoon.

Parker’s family members, one of whom urged Junell to never the let the defendants “see the light of day again,” agreed the penalty sufficed.

“Oh yes,” said Parker’s mother, Carol, when asked whether justice was served Tuesday. “And then some.”

All three of the defendants’ defense attorneys objected to Junell’s sentence, calling it “unreasonable.”

One of the defendants, Savell, who was described as “the muscle” who was recruited about a week before the robbery, turned around and tearfully apologized to Parker, Parker’s family and his own family.

Tuesday’s proceedings, while dominated by emotion, also shed new light on the brazen robbery attempt, which occurred near the Western National Bank on North Grandview Avenue.

Prosecutors referred to Bell as “the ringleader” and said he planned the robbery for months in an effort to retaliate against H&K, a company he resented for firing him.

“I have nothing to say,” Bell told the court shortly before sentencing. Like the other two defendants, Bell appeared before the judge wearing a bright orange jumpsuit, with shackles on his feet and handcuffs on his wrists.

The defense attorneys said Bell knew the policy of the armored truck service, and the defendants assumed the guards would simply drop their weapons to preserve life. They said the guards fired first and Bell and Savell returned fire, which prosecutors did not refute.

Parker, however, said in his victim impact statement that he was shot before he had any idea what happened to him.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Parker said in the statement, adding he and Bell were friends and former colleagues.

Although it is the three defendants who were sentenced to spend the next quarter of a century behind bars, Parker said his injuries have imprisoned him. He said he still has nightmares about the robbery and that he always checks his surroundings no matter where he is, fearing they might be coming “to finish him off.”  

“The good thing about all this is that we still have Matthew,” Carol Parker told the court. “I look at Matt now, and I cherish every second I have with him.”