Guilty: Man gets nine years in prison

Lazaro Aleman, ECB Publishing, Inc.

A 43-year-old county man was sentenced recently to prison for violation of probation and attempted robbery.
On Monday, July 23, Circuit Judge Dawn Caloca-Johnson sentenced Levinston Eugene Grier to nine years with the Department of Corrections (DOC). Grier pled no contest to violation of probation on a felony battery case dating from July 2016. He also pled no contest to a charge of attempted robbery with a deadly weapon on a case dating from October 2017.
The judge adjudicated Grier guilty on the two cases, revoked and terminated the probation on the battery case, and credited him with 282 days served in the county jail.
Assistant Public Defender Davis Revell represented Grier. Assistant State Attorney Andrew Deneen prosecuted the case.
Grier was first arrested in July 2016, based on a domestic incident where he threw beer on his girlfriend and her son punched him in retaliation. At which point, Grier grabbed a knife and stabbed the girlfriend's son in the right forearm. Grier was charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, pled to felony battery and was placed on probation.
In October 2017, Grier was again arrested as a suspect in an attempted armed robbery at the Neighborhood Store at 825 East Washington in Monticello.
According to the Monticello Police Department (MPD) arrest report, a father and daughter told officers that immediately after exiting the store, a black male who had been inside the store approached the father and asked for money.
When the victim said he had no money, the assailant “pulled a knife from his pocket and demanded the victim’s wallet,” according to the police report.
The victim then held his hands up and yelled to his daughter to call the police, at which point the man jumped into a nearby vehicle driven by a woman and drove away on South Marvin Street.
Investigators were able to identify the vehicle from the surveillance camera footage and learned the assailant's identity from the vehicle's occupants, according to the police report.