Princess Anne man sentenced in 2018 armored truck robbery

BALTIMORE, Md. – A U.S. District Judge has sentenced the third and final suspect involved in the January 2018 armored truck robbery in Salisbury.

On Tuesday, 39-year-old Ryan Shevin Smith was sentenced to a total of 141 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

According to court documents and evidence presented at his two-day trial, on January 22, 2018, at around 7:15 a.m., Smith and his co-defendants Michael Watts and Orneth South approached the driver of the armored truck as he was removing cash casettes from from an ATM machine at a credit union located on Mount Hermon Road in Salisbury. Watts then placed a handgun to the drivers head before grabbing him by the hair and ordering him to open the door of the truck. After the door was opened, Smith and South stole several bags of money as well as ATM cassettes full of cash. Watts then forced the driver into the truck and used zip ties to tie his hands up. The robbers then fled with a total of $1,324,288.

Later that year, on April 20th, South was arrested on a warrant and pleaded guilty to this robbery as well as a robbery in North Carolina. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

Michael Watts was arrested on May 18, 2018, and pleaded guilty on January 31, 2019. Police say at the time of Watts’ arrest, he was wearing roughly $70,000 in jewelry, including a custom turtle pendant that was purchased with money stolen during the robbery. Watts also admitted to using his portion of the stolen money to buy a Mercedes S430, clothes, two tombstones, and to pay off bills and rent.

All three were also ordered to pay restitution in the full amount of $1,324,288.