A 25-year-old Williamsburg man pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges stemming from an alleged armed robbery of a man in the Highland Park Community in April.
Lamar O. Wallace is accused of robbing a man in the Williamsburg neighborhood on April 20. Charges against another man believed to have been involved in the robbery, 25-year-old Steve Lorenzo Olvis, were dropped earlier this month after investigators were unable to gather enough evidence.
Because Wallace pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of robbery and one felony count of use of a firearm in commission of a felony, he will go to trial in Williamsburg-James City County Circuit Court in September.
Wallace elected to have a trial by judge instead of facing a jury.
At a preliminary hearing for Wallace in May, the man who told police he was robbed testified he received a call April 20 asking him to drive to a playground in Highland Park. When he arrived, he parked behind a vehicle with three men inside. Two of those men entered his car, robbing him of cash at gunpoint, the man said.
“I complied with everything they asked me,” the man said. “I said, ‘I’ll give you everything, just don’t shoot.’”
The man said he drove away as soon as the robbers were gone. The third person in the suspects’ car has not been arrested in connection to the robbery.
Wallace is also facing charges for an April 19 armed robbery at a Bypass Road hotel. In that incident, Wallace and Olvis are alleged to have lured a man from the Library Tavern on Richmond Road in Williamsburg to the hotel after telling him there were women there before robbing them at gunpoint in the hotel’s parking lot, according to a York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office arrest document.
Wallace will appear in York County District Court at 10 a.m. Aug. 13 for that incident. He will be tried in circuit court for the Williamsburg incident at 1 p.m. Sept. 3.
Related Coverage:
- Charges Dropped Against Alleged Highland Park Armed Robber
- Suspect in Two Historic Triangle Robberies Turns Himself In
- Judge Forwards Highland Park Armed Robbery Case to Grand Jury
- Investigators Arrest One, Seek One in Historic Triangle Armed Robberies
- YPSO: Man Robbed at Gunpoint at Bypass Road Hotel
- Williamsburg Police: Man Robbed at Gunpoint in Highland Park Community
