CONSECUTIVE SENTENCES OF LIFE IMPRISONMENT FOR 49-YEAR-OLD PAROLEE CONVICTED IN THE KNIFE-POINT ROBBERIES OF FOUR WOMEN

Bronx District Attorney Robert T. Johnson announced today that a 49-year-old ex-convict has been sentenced to what amounts to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for a series of armed robberies involving four victims during a seven-day period in the Fall of 2004. Acting State Supreme Court Justice Ethan Greenberg sentenced Hoyt Phillips to four consecutive terms totaling a minimum of 90 years imprisonment to a maximum of imprisonment for the rest of his natural life. Phillips was sentenced as a Mandatory Persistent Violent Felony Offender having previously served 18 years in prison for an armed robbery in Manhattan in 1985. Phillips also had served time on two separate occasions for robbery and attempted robbery in the Bronx in 1978 and 1976.

The knife-point robberies for which Phillips has now been sentenced to life imprisonment began on October 13, 2004 in an apartment building on University Avenue. Phillips attacked a 34-year-old woman as she stepped out of the elevator into the lobby. He fled with the woman’s backpack and wallet.

The second robbery occurred the next day on October 14, 2004 in the lobby of an apartment building on Featherbed Lane. Phillips’ 40-year-old victim was robbed of a necklace, earrings and other jewelry as she got off an elevator. On October 15, 2004, Phillips accosted a 21-year-old pharmacy student in the lobby of an apartment house on the Grand Concourse and forced her to turn over an IPOD and approximately $200 in cash. Several days later on October 19, 2004, Phillips confronted a 40-year-old woman and her 14-year-old son in the lobby of an apartment house on Grand Avenue. Phillips pushed the boy out of the way, held a knife against his mother’s side, took her pocketbook and fled. The woman ran out of the building after the defendant and screamed for help. Police officers, who were nearby writing an accident report, chased Phillips onto the Jerome Avenue entrance ramp to the Cross Bronx Expressway, where he was caught and taken into custody.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney George M. Suminski.