UPDATE:  The following post has been updated to correct the name of the prosecutor who tried the case.  The previuos post mistakenly named the lead prosecutor as Ryan Shovlin.  Senior Deputy District Attorney Stephen R. Zawisky was the lead prosecutor.       

April 27, 2018 – Commonwealth v. Eric M. Collier:  A Dauphin County jury found Eric M. Collier guilty this morning of robbing a police confidential informant at gunpoint. The jury announced their guilty verdict to Robbery and Criminal Conspiracy to Commit Robbery following a four day trial before the Honorable Edward M. Marsico, Jr.

On May 6, 2016, Collier turned what was supposed to be a routine drug deal into an armed robbery.  But as it turned out, the man he robbed was actually a confidential informant working for the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General at the time.  According to Senior Deputy District Attorney Stephen R. Zawisky, who prosecuted the case for the Commonwealth, the informant was working with narcotics agents to buy one ounce of black tar heroin for $2,800.  The target of that undercover drug deal was Collier’s friend, Tyrone Hill. After the informant arranged the deal on the phone with Tyrone Hill, Collier and his friends—Tyrone Hill, Michael Hill, and Darrin Bowers—drove together in a 7-Series BMW to the meeting spot at Girard and Brookwood Streets in Harrisburg City.  Meanwhile, the narcotics agents with the Attorney General’s Office gave the informant the $2,800 cash and followed him to Girard and Brookwood.

Once there, Collier and Michael Hill got out of the car and walked to the informant. But, things did not go as planned: “Instead of giving him the heroin, Collier put a revolver in the informant’s face and demanded the cash” said Zawisky. Collier and his co-conspirator, Michael Hill, then took the cash, hopped into the back of the getaway car, and drove off.

Other Narcotics Agents were watching the deal from an airplane using an infrared camera and followed the getaway car as it drove through the city of Harrisburg. Darrin Bowers, the driver of the BMW who was later apprehended by police, testified at trial that when Collier got back in the car he said “I got him.”

“It was all a sham from the start; they never had the heroin,” said Zawisky.  Black tar heroin, according to Special Agent Christopher Juba, the agent in charge of the case, is incredibly rare on the streets of Harrisburg.  On recorded phone calls, Tyrone Hill initially told the informant that he didn’t have any black tar heroin, and that it would be nearly a week before he could get any.  A short while later, however, Hill changed his story without explanation, calling the informant back and saying he could get it “within the hour.” Around that same time, a Narcotics Agent was watching the group of four, who were outside on a porch at 15^th and Naudain Streets.  The agent testified that the group didn’t go anywhere or meet with anyone until they left 15^th and Naudain to go do the sham deal.

Shovlin praised the hard work of Agents Christopher Juba, James McBride, Lauren Diller, Cynthia Pugh, and Ronald Golembeski, as well as deputy district attorneys Landa Porter and Ryan Shovlin, who assisted the prosecution.