Jail inmates indicted for escape try

Suspects include man charged in two bank heists

Friday, April 25, 2008

Grand jurors indicted robbery suspect Antonio Warren Gantt, 40, and burglary suspect Johnnie William Raines, 30, last week on the conspiracy charges from the alleged March 31 incident at the facility in Leonardtown, and on charges of destroying property valued at more than $500. A judge ordered Tuesday that the two men remain jailed without bond.

St. Mary’s detectives arrested Gantt, a Calvert County resident, last fall on charges that he twice robbed a bank in Lexington Park. Authorities recently said they are investigating whether Gantt carried out two more bank robberies in Las Vegas.

U.S. marshals began tracking Gantt after the first robbery on Sept. 24 at the Maryland Bank and Trust branch on South Shangri-La Drive, court papers state, and the trail went from New York City to Nevada. Gantt immediately was arrested after the second robbery on Oct. 31 at the St. Mary’s bank, where he allegedly sprayed gasoline on two tellers before he left with more than $40,000.

St. Mary’s State’s Attorney Richard Fritz said this week that Gantt’s scheduled trial in the St. Mary’s holdups has been delayed as he awaits evaluations from a plea that the suspect cannot be held legally responsible for his alleged misconduct. Fritz also has said that because of Gantt’s previous criminal record, prosecutors will seek a penalty for him of life in prison without the possibility of parole if he is convicted.

Raines, 30, of Lusby is charged with breaking into a Patuxent Park home during the last week of November, Russell’s Store in Valley Lee and Charlie’s Deli and Pub in Lexington Park on Nov. 28 and, on Dec. 4, into the First Pentecostal Church in Lexington Park. Raines also is charged with breaking into a storage building at the county-owned Nicolet skate park in Lexington Park.

St. Mary’s detectives declined to comment this week on the escape-conspiracy case.

‘‘They’re still doing work in the investigation,” Lt. Rick Burris said Thursday. ‘‘There are people to interview.”

In 2006, a female jail inmate was found atop an air duct in the detention center, after a correctional officer spotted broken drop-ceiling tiles and metal supports on the floor of a multipurpose room. The inmate was charged with attempted escape, and the case was not prosecuted after her evaluation on a plea that she could not be held criminally responsible.