Car stop leads to 2 arrests on robbery charges
WOONSOCKET — Two city men are being held at the state prison after police arrested them on armed robbery and related charges early Wednesday morning.
Tonope M. Phiensinh, 37, of 27 Gaulin Ave. is held without bail on charges of first-degree robbery and conspiracy; and Eric Runny Bounyoung, also
37, of 33 Gilbert Ave. is held in lieu of $10,000 surety bail on charges of conspiracy and obstructing police, according to the Department of Corrections website.
Following a bizarre series of events that took place over several hours, police linked Phiensinh and Bounyoung to an encounter with three individuals, including a 20-year-old woman who told police she surrendered $10 to the two men as they were brandishing a firearm at them and demanding money on Cumberland Hill Road. She was accompanied by two males, 18 and 19 years old, at the time.
Officer Christopher C. Waite wasn’t investigating the robbery at the time, but he wanted to stop a blue Acura in which the men were riding about 2 a.m. Wednesday because he recognized the vehicle and knew it was unregistered. It also had an unlawfully heavy window tint.
Waite tried to pursue the vehicle but it got away from him – until about an hour later, when he saw it again and pulled it over
near Park Square. It was then that Officer Nicholas Maglio advised him that the vehicle and its occupants fit the description of two men who had menaced the same two males he’d encountered earlier in the evening with the female.
Maglio said he ran into the three people on Mendon Road about 12:20 a.m. – for the first time. At that point, the female told officers she was not with the two men when the encounter with the Acura and its occupants took place – she met up with them later.
Nevertheless, the two males told police they were hitchhiking when Phiensinh and Bounyoung picked them up. They were on Route 99 heading toward Providence when the two men began demanding money and menacing them with a handgun.
Somehow, the alleged victims persuaded the men in the Acura to bring them back to the area of the Holiday Inn, near where Maglio first encountered them.
At that point, the victims didn’t want to press any charges and Maglio sent them home. But police grew suspicious of Phiensinh and Bounyoung while questioning them about the encounter after the motor vehicle stop in Park Square, prompting Maglio to look for the victims to get more information.
That was when the victims revealed that they had not one, but two frightening encounters with the men in the Acura – including one that took place after Maglio first met them. During the second, the female victim said her friends were so upset that they were arguing with the men in the car, who were displaying a weapon and demanding money.
She was so frightened of being shot that she gave in to their demands, hoping they’d just go away.
After the motor vehicle stop, officers found a Crossman pellet gun under the driver’s seat of the vehicle. Police said they couldn’t get a straight answer from the men regarding their whereabouts earlier in the evening, but at one point Phiensinh admitted to having been at the Holiday Inn.
The victims made a positive identification of Bounyoung and Phiensinh as the men who’d menaced them and robbed their friend, police said.