Man gets 10 years for attacking security guard and game room robbery
Galveston County TX November 15 2019
A Houston man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in the armed robbery of a Hitchcock game room in May 2018.
Joel Marquis Jackson, 20, pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of aggravated robbery and was sentenced as part of a plea agreement, court records show.
Jackson was one of three people arrested after a Galveston County Sheriff’s Office deputy shot out the tires on a car that was trying to flee a game room robbery, investigators said.
After Tuesday’s plea agreement, all three men have now received prison sentences in connection with the robbery, Assistant District Attorney Dulce Salazar said.
A Galveston County jury found Michael Wayne Kie, 62, guilty of aggravated robbery in July and sentenced him to 35 years in prison, court records show.
A jury in July also found the second defendant, Caleb Elan Reed, 20, guilty of aggravated robbery and sentenced him to 17 years in prison, court records show.
Investigators learned that Kie planned the robbery, and Reed gave orders during it and made most of the threats, Salazar said.
Three men overpowered an armed security guard and one of them showed a pistol at Jokers Gone Wild Again game room, in the 8000 block of Wallace Avenue in Hitchcock, Salazar said. They took the guard’s gun, but someone was able to call 911 while the robbery took place.
Police immediately recovered the stolen money and testimony varied on exactly how much was stolen, Chief Assistant District Attorney Adam Poole said. It was somewhere in the tens of thousands of dollars, according to prosecutors.
Police initially reported the game room’s name as Winners Zone game room. Prosecutors weren’t sure where that name would have come from, but acknowledged that game room names change frequently.
Records from 2018 and 2019 list the game room operating at that address as Jokers Gone Wild Again but list different owners.
Officers and deputies responded to the scene and the robbers tried to get out through the game room’s ceiling by climbing on a sink in a bathroom, but that failed and the men tried to rush out the building’s front door, police said.
The group got to a car, but a deputy shot out a tire before it was able to pull away. The car crashed into the game room building.
No one was injured in the shooting or the crash.
Jackson will be eligible for parole after serving half of his sentence, Salazar said. He was 17 at the time of the robbery.
