The U.S. Attorney’s office has announced that FBI special agents arrested a Newark man in Newark yesterday morning for alleged offenses in connection with the armed robbery of a Subway restaurant in Verona on May 20 and another robbery in West Orange in April.
Antwon Yarbrough, 27, is charged by complaint with two counts of committing a Hobbs Act robbery and one count of using a firearm during a crime of violence. He appeared Thursday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph A. Dickson in Newark and was detained. According to the criminal complaint, Yarbrough and two other individuals entered the Subway restaurant at the intersection of Bloomfield and Pompton avenues on May 20, and the two robbers with Yarbrough brandished firearms. After entering the restaurant, the robbers restrained a Subway employee with zip ties, emptied the cash register, and fled.
The Hobbs Act charges each carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The charge of brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence carries a maximum penalty of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years in prison, which must run consecutively to any other prison term. Each count also carries a maximum fine of $250,000, or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense.
U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman credited special agents of the FBI, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Aaron T. Ford in Newark, with the investigation leading to today’s arrest. He also thanked the Belleville, Bloomfield, Kearny, Linden, Maplewood, Newark, Paramus, Verona and West Orange Police Departments, along with the New Jersey State Police and the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, for their work on this case.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jamari Buxton and Rahul Agarwal of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division in Newark.
The charges and allegations contained in the complaint are merely accusations and the defendants are considered innocent unless and until proven guilty.
