Man pleads guilty in armed robbery at shopping center

HARTFORD — One of three men accused of an armed robbery at a jewelry store in the busy Copaco shopping center in Bloomfield last April pleaded guilty this week in Superior Court in Hartford.

Tracy Trice, 23, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery as part of a plea agreement. He faces a range of four to seven years in prison when he is sentenced March 19.

Trice and two others, Favion Williams, 23, of Hartford, and Austin Kerr, 21, of West Hartford, were arrested shortly after police say they robbed Kim’s Gift Shop at the Copaco plaza on April 16.

The incident occurred shortly after noon, and the parking lot and neighboring stores were packed with shoppers.

The three men were wearing masks when they walked into the store and the owner asked them to remove them, prosecutor Sharmese Hodge told Hartford Superior Court Judge Laura F. Baldini on Monday. Instead one of the men punched the store owner and the other, armed with a rifle, started smashing jewelry cases. The third man was the lookout, police said.

The owner managed to run out of the store and into the Dollar Tree next store to ask for help. A Dollar Tree employee locked the door behind the gift shop owner, preventing a pursuing robber from getting into the Dollar Tree. The armed robbers then ran off.

Bloomfield police quickly rounded up the trio and found discarded masks, the stolen items and a rifle that had been stashed in weeds.

When the judge asked Trice if the facts as stated by Hodge were essentially correct, he hesitated, then a moment later said, “I’m guilty.”

Charges are pending against Williams and Kerr.