Published: May 09, 2008 11:07 pm      

Lexington man gets 14 years for robbery

A Lexington man was sentenced Thursday to serve 14 years in prison for robbing an Econo Lodge motel clerk last May with a box cutter.

Timothy Huggins, 24, originally was indicted on counts of first-degree robbery and being a second-degree persistent felony offender. After pleading guilty to the crime, Huggins’ robbery charge was amended to second-degree robbery, which excluded him from serving 85 percent of his sentence before becoming eligible for parole, according to Kentucky’s violent offender statute.

Now Huggins will have to serve 20 percent — about two years and eight months — of his sentence before meeting the parole board.

Huggins reportedly stole more than $380, which he pulled from the cash register drawer himself before fleeing the scene, Richmond Police Sgt. Willard Reardon said previously.

“The suspect yelled at the clerk, ‘Give me the money!’’ Reardon said. “The guy actually tried to jump across the counter a couple times and the guy pushed him back until he pulled the box cutter.”

Thursday, Huggins pleaded behind tears to Madison Circuit Judge William Jennings that he had “straightened up” his life.

“I know what I done was wrong,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do to change it.”

Huggins told Jennings that he and his “woman” had been arguing and he went to a friend, where they drank “some stuff.” They next went to another friend’s house, where Huggins said the man traded him drugs for fixing the brakes on his car.

“I don’t know why I done it,” Huggins told Jennings. “I woke up and realized what I had done ... I have two kids. I just had a baby. This is not me, sir. It’s not.”

Jennings explained that there are certain kinds of cases in which he is prohibited from granting probation.

“This is one of those cases,” Jennings said.

Police were aided in locating Huggins after releasing photos of the suspect to media and the department’s MySpace Web site.

“We got some calls on him from people saying that’s his picture on your MySpace site,” RPD Maj. Steve Gregg said previously. “Detective B.J. O’Donnell got a phone call stating that this person knew him personally. They didn’t want to leave their name and they knew it was him.”

Huggins lived in the Madison County area previously, but police had difficulty locating him because of his then-recent move to Lexington, Gregg said. Huggins reportedly was seen prior to the robbery in the area without the bandanna he was wearing during the robbery.

Kelly Foreman can be reached at kforeman@richmondregister.com or 624-6694.