Ex-employee charged with felony robbery

Staff report

HOWLAND

A former female employee of Dunkin’ Donuts, 1501 Niles Cortland Road, faces a felony robbery charge on allegations of helping two male accomplices rob the store May 4.

Samantha Phillips, 19, of Edgehill Drive, Warren, pleaded innocent in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court on Wednesday. If convicted, she faces up to eight years in prison.

Her charge stems from a robbery that took place at 4:30 a.m. in which Phillips reported that two men wearing bandannas over their faces confronted her with a gun while she was taking the garbage outside and forced her back inside the store.

Inside, she opened the safe and gave the men cash.

But Howland police, working with the Niles Police Department, determined that Phillips and the two men had planned the robbery.

The two men, Daniel P. Hoolihan Jr., 20, of Edgewood Drive, Warren, and Corey C. Monroe, 19, of Belvedere Avenue, Warren, also are charged.

Hoolihan was indicted on charges of robbery, burglary and grand theft July 27 and will be arraigned in common pleas court Monday.

Monroe was bound over to the grand jury July 25 on a charge of aggravated robbery.