Last of 'Thrill'-Seeking Teen Robbers Sentenced

The last of the four teens guilty of a “thrill”-seeking string of convenience store robberies from Allentown to Palmer Township was sentenced to up to nine years in state prison by a Northampton County judge on Friday, according to The Express Times.

But Judge Michael Koury made Luis Ortiz’s sentence concurrent with the eight-to-20 years he got in Lehigh County Court for the Allentown robberies, published reports said.

However, the judge ordered the defendant to serve 20 years on probation after his sentence has ended, meaning Ortiz, now 19, will be in the court system until he is nearly 60.

Ortiz of South Bethlehem and his cohorts Isaiah Barker of Freemansburg and Ashley Eskaff and Ashley Horning, both of Bethlehem, have all pleaded guilty to convenience store robberies in Allentown, Bethlehem and Palmer Township that were committed last summer.

After she was arrested in July, Horning told Bethlehem police that she and her three accomplices robbed convenience stores according to the arrest papers.

Eskaff told detectives that they didn’t believe they would get caught, the arrest affidavit says. “After we got away with the first robbery, we wanted to do more robberies,” Eskaff said after her arrest.

Horning and Eskaff admitted that they would go into the targeted stores before the robberies to scout them for customers and the location of video surveillance cameras, then bring the information back to Barker and Ortiz, who would hold up store clerks for cash and cigarettes.

Horning and Eskaff have both been given concurrent state prison sentences that will add up to no more than six years.

Barker was sentenced to nine-to-20 years in state prison, according to The Morning Call.