Accurate license plate and speeding helped nab suspect in Niles armed robbery

Staff report

NILES

Police knew the license-plate number of the pickup truck involved in the Monday afternoon armed robbery of the Buy Backs store, 6262 Youngstown Road, minutes after the robbery took place.

But the driver of the truck being clocked at 80 miles per hour in that same area early the next morning sealed the fate of Joseph P. Campbell, 23, of Mahan Denman Road in North Bloomfield. He was in a 35-mile-per-hour zone.

Campbell was arraigned Tuesday in Niles Municipal Court on charges of aggravated robbery, speeding and two other traffic violations in connection with the 12:02 p.m. Buy Backs robbery and the traffic charges.

A Niles police officer arrested Campbell at 3:20 a.m. Tuesday in the parking lot of the Golf Dome on North State Street in Girard after the officer chased him there from the Youngstown Road-Niles-Vienna Road intersection.

The license plate on the truck matched the one observed on the truck during the Buy Backs robbery, police said.

A clerk at the Buy Backs store said a male entered the store wearing a mask and pointed a gun at her while ordering her to the counter. There, he ordered clerks to put video game systems into a garbage can. He then fled the store. Another man was waiting outside in the older Chevy S-10 pickup, according to Niles police.

The game systems were valued at $3,354, police said.

No plea was entered Tuesday on the aggravated robbery charge, and bond was set at $75,000. He pleaded not guilty on the speeding and other charges. He remains in the Trumbull County Jail. The second man has not been apprehended.