Batesville Herald Tribune, Batesville, Indiana

Local News

November 28, 2008

Both Batesville robbers sentenced

Debbie Blank

Twenty-six persons are incarcerated in the Franklin County Security Center, Brookville. The man with the second longest stay, Darnell Chivers, with 203 days as of Nov. 25, is there because of a crime committed in Batesville.

Just after Advance Auto Parts in front of Kroger on State Road 229 opened at 7:30 a.m. March 9, 2006, a female clerk and a male clerk were held up at gunpoint by two males who ordered them to remove money from a safe, Batesville Lt. Stan Holt said at the time.

“A delivery guy showed up and noticed a suspicious vehicle in the parking lot.” After he untied the clerks, whose hands and feet were bound with wire, police were notified and a high-speed chase on I-74 followed.

The car crashed at Golf Manor, a small, northern Cincinnati suburb, and Joachim Robinson, then 23, and Darnell Chivers, then 26, Cincinnati, were arrested.

Two and a half years elapsed. After pleading guilty, Robinson was sentenced Feb. 20 to 20 years in prison with seven years suspended for Class B felonies, armed robbery and criminal confinement, to be served concurrently, Prosecutor Melvin Wilhelm said Nov. 25.

Meanwhile, Chivers “was set for trial and at the last minute he pled guilty. He kept maintaining his innocence.”

Yet the prosecutor said he felt his case against Chivers was strong. Authorities recovered a gun, ski mask and sunglasses along I-74 and police identified Chivers as the man in the escaping car. Holt asked the Indiana State Police lab to run DNA tests on the mask and sunglasses. When both matched Chivers’ DNA, he admitted, “‘OK, I did it.”

He was sentenced Oct. 29 in Franklin Circuit Court on the same counts as Robinson. “Chivers got the full 20 years (with no time suspended) because of his past criminal history,” the prosecutor explained.

Wilhelm expected the robber will be transferred to a state facility to serve out the sentence.

He considered the incident “a very serious crime.” For the clerks, “it had to be the most frightening thing in the world to have two guns pointed at you and be tied up.”

Debbie Blank can be contacted at 812-934-4343, Ext. 113; or debbie.blank@ batesvilleheraldtribune.com. To comment on stories, visit batesvilleheraldtribune.com.

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