STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — March 26, 2024 – Federal authorities say they tracked an ex-con from his home on Staten Island to a jewelry store heist in Brooklyn.
Pierre Hunt, 52, of Bulls Head, drew a silver handgun on two employees inside the Bedford-Stuyvesant location on the afternoon of Jan. 8, according to a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court.
After retrieving $200 cash from the register, he asked if there was anything else to hand over, to which one of the employees replied there was not, authorities allege.
So the defendant, according to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms investigation, fired off a shot within inches of an employee’s head. The bullet ricocheted and struck a wall, officials said.
He fled in a 2017 Nissan Rogue parked about a block away, with mismatched side mirrors, according to a complaint filed March 18 by the Department of Justice.
Surveillance images also showed the same individual sporting large diamond earrings.
A week later, Hunt was pulled over by police in an SUV matching the same description, with what appeared to be the same earrings, federal prosecutors say.
He handed over a license to officers that showed a Staten Island address. The vehicle was registered to someone else with the same address.
A federal judge signed off on a search warrant in February, which yielded data which authorities included in their request for an arrest warrant in the case.
Cell phone data, and a license plate reader on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge showed that on the day in question, Hunt made the trip to the Brooklyn neighborhood where the robbery was reported, court filings allege. The same data indicated he was back home on the Island just over an hour later.
Months prior to the stickup, authorities say, he made a transaction at a pawn shop providing the same driver’s license.
The case is federal because the store deals in interstate commerce, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
A public defender for Hunt could not be reached for comment Monday.
The defendant previously was charged as the wheelman in a pair of 2015 stickups at a gas station and a wine store in Queens, culminating in a year on Rikers Island.
He also did 18 months upstate for a 2017 felony drug conviction, records show.
Article provided by Staten Island Advance staff. Click here to read the article.