Man sentenced for robbery at metro-east store that left clerk with brain injury

A 31-year-old Texas man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the armed robbery of an East St. Louis convenience store that left the clerk with a traumatic brain injury.

Vernelle E. Hines was accused of taking a couple hundred dollars and two bottles of tequila from Mega Supermarket at 1901 Central Ave. in East St. Louis on Halloween in 2023.

A federal court filing citing surveillance video and an interview with the clerk states that a man entered the store at approximately 9 a.m. armed with a loaded gun and wearing a mask that covered most of his face. After the only other customer in the store left, he brandished the gun and demanded the bottles of tequila from the clerk.

When the clerk did not comply, he struck her in the face and head repeatedly with the gun and discharged the weapon into the store during the struggle, according to the court document. The clerk sustained a traumatic brain injury, scalp and facial lacerations, closed fracture of the nasal bone, several missing teeth and a broken tooth.

The clerk told investigators the man then took the money and alcohol and fled on foot.

Hines was identified as the robbery suspect from a latent fingerprint on a bottle of Budweiser he purchased and drank from while waiting for another customer to leave the store before the robbery began. A 9mm semi-automatic pistol that investigators seized from Hines’ home in Texas matched the cartridge case discharged during the robbery.

At the time of the robbery, Hines was on supervised release for charges of felon in possession of a firearm in the Eastern District of Missouri.

Hines pleaded guilty in October to one count of interference with commerce by robbery and one count of carry and use of a firearm during a crime of violence.

Judge David W. Dugan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois handed down the prison sentence on Wednesday.

Hines’ attorneys from the federal public defender’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.