A 22-year-old man was sentenced this week to four years in prison for helping rob a Secret Service agent in Tustin in June following a presidential fundraiser in Los Angeles.
Eshon Dwayne Dodson was convicted late last year of second-degree robbery and on Tuesday, Feb. 4, he became the last of the three defendants to be sentenced.
On June 15, Dodson and two older men — Jamonte Fitzgerald Johnson and Bertran Claude Bell — apparently followed the agent from a Los Angeles fundraiser attended by then-President Joe Biden.
According to court filings, the off-duty agent parked, grabbed a backpack and began walking toward his Tustin home. A car belonging to Dodson pulled up next to the agent, according to court records, and Johnson got out of the vehicle brandishing a handgun that he pointed at the agent.
Johnson grabbed the agent’s bag, but as the robbers were driving off the agent fired several gunshots at their vehicle, striking Bell.
The men apparently dropped the gun used in the robbery, as well as the agent’s stolen cellphone, radio and other belongings, which police reportedly found scattered less than a mile away.
The robbers took Bell to a Los Angeles hospital for treatment. The agent was not injured.
Police previously described the robbery as a crime of opportunity, indicating that they didn’t believe the agent had been targeted.
DNA on the gun and the agent’s belongings led investigators to Johnson, who was arrested in Riverside on July 11. Circumstantial evidence — including cellphone records, text and social media messages, DNA matches and video-surveillance footage — helped detectives identify Dodson and Bell. Both were arrested in July.
Bell quickly pleaded guilty to a felony count of second-degree robbery and on July 29 was sentenced to six year in prison. Johnson — who was convicted alongside Dodson at trial — was sentenced in November to 29 years to life in prison because he was a third-striker already on federal probation for a weapons violation and parole for making criminal threats.
Dodson faced up to six years behind bars, though prosecutors in a sentencing brief suggested the four-year sentence that was ultimately handed down by the judge.
Dodson’s attorney, Alternate Defender Rick Vallejo, wrote in a sentencing brief that while Dodson was not blameless, he was also the “least culpable” of the three robbers. Johnson was the instigator, Vallejo wrote, while Dodson apparently served as the getaway driver.
Dodson did try to hide his role in the robbery by selling the getaway car at an auction, the defense attorney acknowledged. But compared to his accomplices — both are more than a decade older and had criminal histories and previous convictions — Dodson was a “passive participant,” his attorney added.
Dodson was also given credit for 200 days in county jail while awaiting trial and sentencing, court records show.