A Bronx man who vanished after a gunpoint robbery at a Mount Vernon gas station last summer has been caught nearly a year later, hiding out in rural Pennsylvania. Eric Boothe, 40, appeared before Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith C. McCarthy in White Plains federal court on Tuesday and was ordered detained pending trial as the second suspect in the August 29, 2025, robbery.
Boothe had been on the run since that morning, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Federal prosecutors say he fled into the Bronx immediately after the crime, disabled his phone, changed his financial and social media habits, and eventually relocated to Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, in the Poconos. U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said in a statement circulated by the office on X, “Thanks to the FBI and our White Plains prosecutors, Boothe's getaway has ended, and he will now answer to our federal Complaint in court.”
How the FBI Found Him a Year Later
Investigators eventually caught up with Boothe by tracing a new phone he had registered under someone else's name, then monitoring a local pizzeria he was known to visit in the small Pocono town, according to the same SDNY account. The arrest was carried out under the FBI's Summer Heat 2.0 initiative, a nationwide violent-crime enforcement surge launched in June 2026 to track down high-priority fugitives and repeat offenders. That campaign has already produced results well beyond Westchester County — a related sweep across Maryland and Delaware had netted more than 100 fugitive arrests by mid-August 2026, according to a report from WBAL-TV.
The case that put Boothe in federal custody traces back to the pre-dawn hours of August 29, 2025. Per the criminal complaint unsealed this week, Boothe and co-defendant Jamaire Robertson parked near Robertson's Bronx apartment around 5:10 a.m., put on masks, hoods, and gloves, and walked together into neighboring Mount Vernon, where they robbed a gas station attendant at gunpoint around 5:29 a.m.
Co-Defendant's Shootout Disrupted Metro-North
Robertson, a 28-year-old Jamaican national, did not get far. He was arrested that same afternoon after allegedly firing a handgun at approaching NYPD officers on a residential Mount Vernon street during his escape, a confrontation Hoodline reported on at the time. The gunfire and subsequent search for the fleeing suspects forced Metro-North Railroad to temporarily shut down morning rush-hour train service on the New Haven Line, according to Daily Voice. While Robertson was taken into custody within hours, Boothe slipped away and stayed hidden for nearly a year.
The robbery is being prosecuted federally rather than in state court because it falls under the Hobbs Act, which covers commercial robberies that affect interstate commerce in any way, exposing defendants to up to 20 years in federal prison per count, according to a legal explainer published on Medium. Boothe faces an even steeper penalty tied to the firearm itself. Because he was previously convicted of a federal firearms offense in 2016, his current charge of possessing and brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence carries a mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison, one that must be served consecutively to whatever sentence he receives on the underlying robbery counts under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c).
Multi-Agency Investigation, Unanswered Questions
The long-running investigation was a joint effort among the FBI's Westchester Safe Streets Task Force, the New York City Police Department, and the Mount Vernon Police Department, federal prosecutors said. Local departments reportedly handled regional surveillance while FBI task force agents carried out the out-of-state arrest warrant in Pennsylvania.
It remains unclear where Robertson's pending federal trial in White Plains currently stands, or whether prosecutors intend to try both men together now that Boothe is in custody. Hoodline previously reported in December on the broader federal case against the pair, part of a string of Hobbs Act charges tied to armed robberies across Mount Vernon and Manhattan.
