A Hyattsville man arrested Monday in connection with the brutal raping and robbery of a Landover store clerk was on probation after being granted early release for violent crimes committed in a five-week span in late 2006 and early 2007, according to court documents.
Travis Shepperson, 20, was found using the victim’s cell phone in the lobby of a Prince George’s County parole office on Rhode Island Avenue, after police, working with T-Mobile, tracked the phone’s signal, according to police statements obtained by The Examiner. Detectives matched the phone’s serial number to that of the victim’s and arrested Shepperson.
Shepperson later told police he stole the phone from the victim after a neighbor threatened to kill his family if he didn’t rob the business on the 7000 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Highway.
On Monday morning, Shepperson allegedly forced the female store clerk into a backroom and raped her at gunpoint after she told him there wasn’t any money in the store.
Shepperson was released from jail in January and was in the midst of a three-year term of probation after having been arrested three times between Dec. 29, 2006, and Jan. 28, 2007. In two of the cases — one a mugging, the other in which Shepperson drove the getaway car for an armed robbery — prosecutors reached plea agreements, knocking off several of the most egregious charges against him.
In the third case, in which Shepperson was charged, along with three others, with beating a man and stealing his truck on Dec. 29, 2006, all charges were dropped because prosecutors couldn’t corroboratestatements by a co-defendant, a legal requirement for trial, according to documents obtained by The Examiner. One of the defendants in that case pleaded guilty; he had been found driving the truck the day after the crime.
Shepperson had already been sentenced to 18 months for the Jan. 6 mugging when he went before Circuit Judge Sheila Tillerson-Adams in August 2007 to be sentenced for driving the Jan. 28 getaway car. Prosecutors requested he serve 12 months in addition to the 18 months, but Adams ruled he would serve the 12 months at the same time as the prior 18. He was released six months early for good behavior.
In a November letter to Adams requesting his sentence be shortened, Shepperson wrote, “I promise you won’t regret this.”
He is being held without bail.
