A New Carrollton man has pleaded guilty to his role in a 2008 home invasion-robbery that left three people dead.
Prosecutors said Delante Cook, 35, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit robbery, attempted robbery and use of a firearm in a violent crime in connection with the 2008 stabbing deaths of two brothers who rented a Springfield home together and a visitor.
An indictment unsealed in May alleged that Cook and Jelani Slay committed the killings as part of a plot to target Fairfax County marijuana dealers to obtain drugs and money. The pair targeted the home of 26-year-old Ryan Strope and 38-year-old Terence Strope because they believed the pair was trafficking marijuana. The Stropes and a third man, 26-year-old Andres Yelicie, were fatally stabbed in the Nov. 19, 2008, robbery.
Cook and others “masqueraded as police officers to rob and stab three men to death,” Neil MacBride, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.
Court documents say the intruders dressed in “clothing adorned with law enforcement-related lettering and insignia” to gain entrance to the home while armed with knives and guns.
Slay was shot and killed in 2009 by an off-duty D.C. police officer in a shootout during an attempted robbery. No one else has been charged in the Fairfax slayings.
Prosecutors said Cook’s plea agreement recommends that he receive a sentence of life in prison plus 20 years. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for Dec. 16.
