10-year sentence recommended for gas station robber

YOUNGSTOWN

Attorneys are recommending a 10-year sentence for a man who pleaded guilty today in Mahoning County Pleas Court for robbing two Austintown gas stations within hours of each other.

Judge Anthony D’Apolito will sentence Shawn Villers, 32, after a presentence investigation is completed. He pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated robbery, both of them first degree felonies.

Villers was accused of pulling a knife June 13 and robbing a BP station at Mahoning Avenue and Niles Canfield Road and a Get Go station on Mahoning Avenue, both of them hours apart.

In exchange for his plea prosecutors dropped a repeat violent offender specification on both charges.