Dayton Man Sentenced to 25 Years for Kidnapping and Robbery

DAYTON – Shellie Woods, 42, of Dayton, was sentenced in U.S. District Court to 300 months in prison for conspiracy to commit kidnapping as well as robbery.

Benjamin C. Glassman, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, Angela L. Byers, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Cincinnati Field Division and Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl announced the sentence handed down yesterday by U.S. District Judge Walter H. Rice.

According to court documents, between late 2011 and early 2012, Woods and several others worked together to rob businesses in Southern Ohio. The co-defendants include: Terrell Mabry, 46, of Dayton; Dion Gullatte, 43, of Dayton, and Eric Black, 39, of Dayton.

On November 10, 2011, they completed the robbery of St. Elizabeth pharmacy, a store in the Dayton area that sold prescription drugs. The four men unlawfully entered the home of an employee of the pharmacy and seized and restrained the employee and his wife before demanding that the employee provide them with security codes and keys necessary to gain access to the pharmacy.

Gullatte used the codes to steal hundreds of prescription pills, including oxycodone, from the pharmacy. He and Woods took the pills to a Dayton residence where they split the robbery proceeds with Black and Mabry.

On one other occasion, Woods, Gullatte and Mabry worked together with another person, Jason Brice, 29, of Columbus, to rob the US Bank on Gettysburg Avenue in Dayton. Again the defendants unlawfully entered the home of an employee, a bank teller, to hold her and her family hostage until she agreed to help them gain access to the bank’s vault.

They held the teller’s family hostage at her home for almost twenty-four hours before attempting to move the family to another location.  The defendants ultimately instructed the teller to enter the bank and to request that the bank give her abductors money to secure the release of her family.

Woods pleaded guilty on June 23, 2015 to conspiracy to commit kidnapping as well as robbery. Brice was sentenced on December 16, 2014 to 124 months in prison and Mabry was sentenced yesterday to 168 months in prison for their roles in the scheme.  Black and Gullatte are scheduled for sentencing in the coming weeks.

Acting U.S. Attorney Glassman commended the cooperative investigation by the FBI and the Dayton Police Department, as well as Assistant United States Attorney Brent Tabacchi, who is representing the United States in this case.