Cove credit union robber gets 30-month sentence

By LYNETTE SOWELL
Cove Leader-Press 
    
A federal judge in El Paso sentenced 21-year-old Reiquon Gaines of Evanston, Ill., to 30 months in federal prison for two bank robberies, one of them occurring at Texas Partners Federal Credit Union in Copperas Cove on Nov. 16, 2016. 
Additionally, Gaines will have three years of supervised release after serving time and must pay a $15,853 in combined restitution, announrced United States Attorney John F. Bash, FBI Special Agent in Charge Emmerson Buie, El Paso Division, and FBI Special Agent in Charge Christopher Combs, San Antonio Division.
Gaines pled guilty in in September 2017, to two counts of aiding and abetting bank robbery by force or violence. He served as the getaway driver for the robberies, the other of which occurred at United Bank of El Paso Del Norte in El Paso on September 9, 2016, nearly two months prior to the Texas Partners Federal Credit Union robbery in Copperas Cove.
Jerrious Javonte Jackson of Killeen, 23, Gaines’ co-defendant in the Copperas Cove robbery, is currently in custody in Illinois. He too faces federal charges in connection with two bank robberies in Illinois, along with the Copperas Cove bank robbery.
The two were arrested less than two weeks after the Copperas Cove robbery, during which one of the suspects at the time jumped the counter, demanding money, while the other waited outside in a vehicle. Gaines was arrested in Chicago and Jackson arrested in Southaven, Miss. 
In July 2017, a federal judge sentenced Gaines’s co-defendant, 21-year-old Shawn Anthony Williams of El Paso, to 21 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to commit the El Paso bank robbery.
FBI special agents in El Paso and in Waco investigated this case, with Assistant United States Attorneys Shane Wagman in El Paso and Greg Gloff in Waco prosecuted this case.