Jury: Teen guilty of armed robbery

It took a Terrebonne Parish jury three days to find 17-year-old Joshua Douglas guilty of using a BB gun to rob people in Houma’s Lisa Park neighborhood, the District Attorney’s Office reported.

Douglas was convicted of two counts of armed robbery and one count of armed robbery. District Judge David Arceneaux, who presided over the trial, will sentence Douglas at a later date. The Houma teen faces 10 to 99 years on the armed robbery charges and five to 49.5 years on the attempted armed robbery conviction.

The first incident occurred June 30, 2012, between 9 and 10 p.m., according to prosecutors Jason Lyons and Jason Dagate. Douglas, two 15-year-old friends and his 14-year-old uncle – all on bicycles – approached three high school students, brandished a handgun and BB guns made to look like real Walther semi-automatic handguns and demanded their cell phones, prosecutors said.

The handgun Douglas used in the incident, a silver 9mm Smith & Wesson, did not contain a magazine, according to testimony.

When one of the high school teens refused to surrender his cell phone, he was hit twice in the face with the guns and shot with a BB gun by one of the four robbers, prosecutors said. Douglas and his accomplices ran away when a vehicle passed nearby.

A second incident occurred at 1 a.m. the following morning near the intersection of Alma Street and Cascade Drive. Douglas, who was peddling a bicycle while his 14-year-old uncle rode on the handlebars, approached a 20-year-old, who was riding his skateboard home from a friend’s house. Prosecutors said the 14-year-old got off the bike, pointed his BB gun at the skateboarder and demanded his cell phone. When the man refused, Douglas got off the bike and pulled the 9mm handgun. The man surrendered his phone and ran away, authorities said.

Terrebonne sheriff’s deputies arrested the teens later that day.