A 53-year-old Philadelphia man pleaded guilty to robbing a North Philadelphia convenience store at gunpoint, firing two shots inside the business and chasing a terrified worker out onto the street, in an October 2024 crime that has now reached sentencing — though public reports disagree sharply on how much prison time he actually received.
A Violent Night on North 27th Street
Larry Dempsey walked into a convenience store on the 2600 block of North 27th Street armed with a gun on October 6, 2024, according to NBC10 Philadelphia. Dempsey took cash from the store register and fired his gun twice during the encounter, the station reports. The gunfire caused damage inside the store, though no one was injured in the robbery.
During the chaos, Dempsey chased the store worker out of the business and into the street, per the same account. The worker survived the ordeal physically unharmed, but the incident left the North Philadelphia block shaken, coming amid a documented pattern of armed robberies targeting city businesses.
Charges Came Months Later
It took roughly eight months for the case to move forward. Dempsey wasn't formally charged with the robbery and related firearm offenses until June 2025, the station's report notes. He ultimately pleaded guilty this year to robbery and to using, carrying and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence.
That firearm charge carries significant legal weight. Under federal law, as defined in the U.S. Code, firearms-use offenses cover situations where a weapon was brandished, discharged or otherwise used during a crime prosecutable in federal or state court. Federal data show this type of charge is common in robbery cases — the U.S. Sentencing Commission found that 40.6% of robbery offenders sentenced in fiscal year 2021 also carried a conviction for using or carrying a firearm during the offense.
Conflicting Reports on the Sentence
Here is where the case gets murky. NBC10 Philadelphia's own headline states Dempsey was facing two years in prison. But a separate announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice's Eastern District of Pennsylvania office says Dempsey was sentenced to 120 months and one day in prison — 10 years — to be followed by supervised release and $7,600 in restitution. The two figures are dramatically different, and the available reporting does not explain the gap between them.
Hoodline is presenting both figures as reported, since the underlying sentencing date, court docket details and full text of the Justice Department's release were not available to reconcile the discrepancy.
How It Compares to Other Philadelphia Cases
If the decade-long sentence holds, it would fall in line with other armed robbery sentences handed down in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in recent years. A Philadelphia man was sentenced to 150 months in prison and five years of supervised release for a 2022 armed robbery of a Northeast Philadelphia store, according to the Department of Justice. In a separate case, another Philadelphia man received 14 years and one day in federal prison for committing three armed robberies of North Philadelphia businesses.
Those earlier cases, like Dempsey's, were prosecuted out of the same federal district and involved firearms used during robberies of local businesses — a recurring pattern federal prosecutors in the city have continued to pursue.
