BY RACHAEL MYERS LOWE
rlowe@thestate.com
LEXINGTON COUNTY, SC — Shortly after 1 am Saturday, three men armed with a shotgun broke into a home on Doe Trail Drive in Lexington County, threatened to kill three young children if the home owners didn’t cooperate, Lexington County Sheriff Lewis McCarty said in a news release.
Charged with robbing the family which lived one street over from them were roommates Jonathan Christian Hughes, 19, and Antonio Lamont Johnson, 25, of Deer Moss Trail and Jahmand Maurice McNeill, 22, who lives 9 houses down on Deer Moss Trail.
The married couple was forced to stand in a shower while the three took Wii and Xbox video game consoles, a Samsung Galaxy Note smart phone and iPod portable media players.
Around 5:30am, warrants allege, McNeill, alone, broke into another home on Doe Trail Drive but was confronted and disarmed by the homeowner. McNeill is accused of hitting one of the arresting officers in the face with his elbow while he was being arrested. The officer was not seriously hurt, McCarty said.
Investigators found some of the items that stolen earlier in the morning at NcNeill’s home. Other items were found in the woods behind Hughes and Johnson’s home.
The three men are being held at the Lexington County Detention Center. McNeill is charged with burglary, armed robbery, kidnapping, use of a weapon in commission on a violent crime and assaulting a police officer. Hughes and Johnson are charged with kidnapping, armed robbery, burglary and possessing a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.
L&M note: This is the same area in which authorities discovered a meth lab earlier this month.
