Yesterday, the Department of Justice reported that Tyree Eugene McCombs, aged 29, from Washington D.C., has been sentenced to 228 months in federal prison following a spree of violent crimes including stalking, armed robbery, and kidnapping that terrorized victims in Virginia and Maryland. McCombs, already known to authorities for a 2019 attempted armed robbery conviction, seemed to have escalated his criminal activities in late 2022 before being captured and pleading guilty to his offenses, according to the Department of Justice.
The violent saga began on September 3, 2022, when McCombs, together with accomplices orchestrated the stalking and subsequent armed robbery of a couple from Alexandria, Virginia by strategically placing a GPS device in their Mercedes. The robbers, in a heist, ripped straight from a movie script, waited hours before ambushing the victims, assaulting them, and making off with over $180,000 worth of goods. McCombs managed to evade arrest for this crime only to strike again two months later, in another meticulously planned kidnapping and robbery in Maryland. U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin, Jr. and FBI Special Agent Sean Ryan announced the sentencing of McCombs.
According to court records, the criminals didn't just stop at robbery, but took their crimes to a more sinister level — physically attacking their victims, binding them with zip ties, and making away with their valuables at gunpoint. The criminal ring seemed to have a pattern: targeting, and tracking their victims’ movements with GPS technology, assaulting and robbing them. In November, McCombs and a co-conspirator went so far as to abduct a 25-year-old woman in Maryland, committing atrocities that included robbing her, and pistol-whipping her while binding her hands. As detailed in the court documents, the perpetrators also demanded ransom for her life, leading to her daring escape and subsequent shooting.
Law enforcement agencies and the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force played a crucial role in apprehending McCombs and his co-conspirators. Their diligent investigation was instrumental in piecing together the events that transpired during McCombs's crime spree, the details of which were meticulously documented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Meredith Mayer-Dempsey and Charles R. Jones. The capture of the suspect was, in part, thanks to surveillance footage and McCombs's own GPS monitor data, which was ironically a condition of his supervised release from an earlier conviction. The GPS data left a digital trail that ultimately led to his downfall — a stark contrast to the sophisticated methods he used to track his victims.
Photographs and surveillance images provided crucial evidence, capturing McCombs and his co-conspirators in the act of committing these heinous crimes, including the moment they carried the victims’ belongings away after the frightening ordeal in the Alexandria apartment, as well as the chilling images of McCombs and an accomplice abducting the Maryland woman at gunpoint. These chilling moments are encapsulated in images that show the reality of the criminal acts and served as incontrovertible evidence in the case against McCombs, as reflected in the Department of Justice's press release.
