Temple Hills resident Ronald Lamont Jenkins, 36, has been sentenced to 77 months in federal prison following his guilty plea to an armed bank robbery in Northeast Washington D.C. Jenkins was also ordered to pay restitution amounting to $8,345.00 to TD Bank, as per the announcement from U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves, according to a release by the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The bank heist, which occurred on June 13, 2022, quickly escalated when Jenkins demanded the teller to "open the drawer" while displaying the handle of a handgun. The crime saw Jenkins escaping with over $8,000 before inadvertently dropping some of the stolen cash in the bank's entryway. The criminal's journey was meticulously reconstructed by FBI agents who were to eventually track him to a liquor store and then to a metro station in Prince Georges County, suggesting he likely resided in Maryland.
As detailed in the U.S. Attorney's Office release, surveillance footage and a heat-soaked trail of discarded clothing would later become key in linking Jenkins to the robbery at TD Bank as well as a previous knife-point robbery at Lowe's Home Improvement Store in Bowie, Maryland.
FBI agents effectively used a combination of surveillance video analysis and forensic evidence, including a distinctive blue water shoe and neon yellow gloves found at the scene, to pinpoint Jenkins as the suspect. Moreover, the investigation into the Lowe's robbery yielded DNA evidence on the left-behind clothes, which was to later match DNA on the items discarded after the bank robbery. Jenkins was arrested on November 14, 2023.
The case against Jenkins was put together by the collaborative efforts of the FBI's Washington Field Office's Violent Crime Task Force, the Metropolitan Police Department, with support from the FBI's Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, and Prince George's County police. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Emory V. Cole and James Nelson of the Federal Major Crimes section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia took the lead in the prosecution.
