Fed bank robbery case moved to Georgia
♦ Details in a Rome robbery fit the same pattern as two in North Carolina.
The case against a Kennesaw man who is accused of robbing a bank in Rome last year has been transferred back to federal court in North Georgia.
A pre-indictment filing, called a criminal information, accuses Johnny Jermaine Davis of the robbery of a former SunTrust Bank at 2401 Shorter Ave.
It was filed in U.S. District Court in Rome in late March.
Davis is accused of entering the bank, which is now a Truist Bank branch, on May 28, 2021, at 11:28 a.m. and pointing a pistol at the employees. According to Rome police reports, the robber demanded that employees lie on their stomachs and took an undisclosed amount of money before fleeing on foot.
Davis, 37, was arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on June 9, 2021, on charges concerning the Rome robbery as well as two other bank robberies in North Carolina.
While he was arrested in Georgia, his case had been transferred to the Western District of North Carolina after a pretrial hearing that June.
According to a criminal complaint filed in the Western
District of North Carolina:
On Feb. 25, 2021, at approximately 3:02 p.m., an individual later identified as Davis entered a BB&T bank branch located at 1653
Hendersonville Road in Asheville and approached the teller area.
The complaint states that Davis pointed a pistol at bank tellers and yelled at them not to move. He then jumped behind the counter and ordered three bank employees to lie down on the ground. He took approximately $8,950 in cash from that location.
However, law enforcement officers collected a piece of paper left by the suspect that he had claimed to be a check before he pulled out a pistol.
“The paper was blank except for the name ‘Johnny Davis’ written on it,” the complaint filed by FBI Special Agent Sharon A. Gavin.
He apparently had cased two other banks prior to robbing a Wells Fargo on May 20, 2021, in Asheville. Both the bank locations described his actions as suspicious and alerted police.
Davis approached the Wells Fargo counter, pointed a gun at a teller, jumped over the counter and ordered the bank employees to lie down on the ground. He then emptied the bank’s cash drawers and fled the scene with $831 in cash.
Like the previous robbery, Davis told the tellers of a fictitious device that would alert him if they moved. In the Feb. 25 robbery he said a device would release toxic gas if they moved before two minutes passed. In the May 20 robbery he said he’d placed a motion sensor and not to move until two minutes had elapsed.
Reports from the robbery in Rome fit the same pattern as the North Carolina robberies.
No hearing concerning the case have been scheduled, according to U.S. District Court records.