A 20-year-old Little Rock man, once considered an up-and-coming musician, accepted a 25-year prison sentence on Monday for armed robberies in which some of the victims were lured with Craigslist ads that promised discount electronic equipment.
Ubangi Zambezi Robinson pleaded guilty to five counts of aggravated robbery, reduced from eight, in exchange for the sentence that will require him to serve 171/2 years in prison before he can qualify for parole.
"I took from those innocent people," Robinson said when asked by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen to describe what he'd done in his own words.
The prison time will be followed by a five-year suspended sentence, and the judge urged Robinson to use his time behind bars to learn to make better life choices, warning that Robinson could face more prison time if he doesn't mend his ways after he gets out of prison. Robinson will be 37 when he's eligible for early release.
"I regret you've made choices to put yourself in prison," the judge said. "I pray you make better choices when you get out."
Robinson had once cultivated a reputation as a blossoming hip-hop musician in the area, with a career that included a TV appearance with former partner Jamahl Davis on the BET channel music-video program 106 & Park. Prosecutors had played his music videos at an earlier hearing.
Deputy prosecutor Emily Abbott said Robinson had robbed at gunpoint Gary Bloodworth and Adam Hogg of their wallets, cellphones and video game outside their residence on Kavanaugh Boulevard on July 4, 2012.
That same day, he also robbed Wilford Harvey Stuckey, Brenda Stuckey and Gregory Arnold after they answered a Craigslist ad to buy iPads, she said.
Charges against a co-defendant, 21-year-old Kameron William Deal, were dropped in March, although he remains charged with robbery in a May 2012 case involving a man who responded to a Craigslist ad listing a cellphone for sale.
Robinson still has to resolve misdemeanor gun and felony breaking or entering charges in Saline County over his January arrest in Benton by police investigating vehicle burglaries at the Dogwood Lakes Apartments at 1907 Arkansas 5 North.
Robinson and a youth, Randtrel Carruthers, were arrested after a foot chase, while Nicholas Deshawn Barnes, 19, of Little Rock led police on a car chase that reached 125 mph and ended when the car Barnes was driving crashed near the Otter Creek exit on Interstate 30.
Barnes pleaded guilty to felony fleeing and breaking or entering in May in exchange for three years on probation with a $500 fine. Carruthers was referred to juvenile court.
Robinson's 17-year-old brother, Deshawn Leo-Marcus Wilburd of Little Rock, is also accused of participating in three armed robberies, two in October 2012, with police saying that one of Wilburd's accusers reported being robbed while answering a Craigslist ad.
In the third holdup, in December 2012, Wilburd is accused of being one of three robbers who tried to abduct a woman, Lakethria Johnson, from the parking lot of the Greater Christ Temple Church on Bishop Warren Drive in Little Rock.
He's scheduled for a hearing next Wednesday before Circuit Judge Chris Piazza to determine whether he is competent to stand trial.
Metro on 07/23/2014