2 Guilty In Gwinnett Jeweler's Violent Robbery

LAWRENCEVILLE, GA — Two men will spend the rest of their lives in prison for their roles in the violent 2011 home invasion and armed robbery of a Gwinnett County jewelry dealer.

Jarvis Levoyd Tucker and Jason Jermoine Tucker were convicted by a Gwinnett County jury Wednesday on multiple charges including armed robbery, kidnapping, cruelty to children and burglary.

Judge Debra K. Turner made sure they'll never do it again — sentencing both men to two life sentences without the possibility of parole, followed by another 245 consecutive years to be served in prison.

The two were accused of being part of an organized home-invasion ring which, on Sept. 14, 2011, violently robbed the owner of 12 metro-Atlanta jewelry stores, and his family, at their home off of Sugarloaf Parkway.

In the early morning, the man had reportedly returned home with thousands of dollars in cash and customer-owned jewelry that was to be repaired. As he got out of his vehicle, a masked man with a shotgun approached him and, along with two other masked men with handguns, forced him into his home.

He, his wife and their four children were threatened at gunpoint and the parents were bound with duct tape — the wife being forced to undress first. During the robbery, one of the men fired a .38-caliber revolver into a wall of the home.

The couple freed themselves from the tape and called police, but the masked men had already gotten away in a vehicle driven by Jarvis Tucker.

Authorities said the case had gone cold until summer 2015, when a federal prison inmate in Arizona contacted Gwinnett County Police with information about who was involved. Based on that information, Gwinnett police and the FBI learned that the same robbery crew — consisting of the two Tuckers and Darden Walker — had tried to pull a similar home invasion on a nightclub owner in Greenville, South Carolina just two weeks after the Gwinnett robbery.

The federal inmate told investigators that the crew placed a GPS tracking devices on the Gwinnett jewelry store owner and South Carolina nightclub owner's vehicles to learn where they lived. In January 2016, an undercover FBI agent posing as the employee of an elderly jeweler met with Jarvis and Jason Tucker at a McDonald's in Fulton County.

He told them he wanted to recruit a crew to rob his employer of a large amount of money and jewelry. They met the agent the following night at Three Dollar Cafe in Norcross, where police and FBI agents swarmed the area in an attempt to arrest them.

After a short car chase, an FBI agent used his vehicle to strike and stop Jarvis Tucker's car. Jarvis and Jason Tucker and Darden Walker were taken into custody. All three were dressed in black and two loaded handguns were found with them.

At trial, lawyers for the men argued that prosecutors had a weak case and had to "manufacture" evidence with the undercover agent. Jurors found them guilty on all 18 charges against them.

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