WEST CHESTER — The scheme was simple and, for a time, effective.
Two or three people would enter a “big box” retail store and wander the aisles with shopping carts, loading them with big ticket items like Apple products or other tech goodies. Then one of the people would leave the store without any merchandise and get into a black Jeep Grand Cherokee parked outside.
That person would then drive around to the side or rear of the store where a fire exit was located. The others would then push the shopping cart out of the fire exit and quickly load the items they had not paid for into the Jeep and drive away.
Knowing their movements would be on surveillance camera, the thieves would often change licenses plates so as to divert attention by law enforcement. On occasion, when a store employee would see them and try to stop their flight, one of the suspects would pull a gun out and threaten the person.
The plan worked and worked and worked. A multi-state task force from Pennsylvania, New Jetrsey and Delaware identified approximateky 92 thefts from Walmart and Target stores in those states over a one year period. The loss was estimated at $200,000, according to court documents. Investigators in that team were able to identify several of those men and women.
Now, after months of investigation by law enforcement agencies across the Delaware Valley, one of the men involved is headed to trial in Chester County Common Pleas Court. Jamaal Mitchell, his son Jahmir Mitchell, and others are believed by police to be responsible for many of the incidents of retail theft or robbery since December 2022.
Mitchell, 44, of Philadelphia, is currently serving a one to four year prison sentence at the State Correctional Institution at Phoenix in Montgomery County. Attorneys involved in the local case — Assistant District Attorney Kaitlyn Michalek for the prosecution and Assistant Public Defender Stephen Dodd for the defense — told Judge Alita Rovito on Thursday that they would need time to file pre-trial motions in the case before its scheduled start time in February.
Michalek signaled that her case might become more expansive and include evidence of the other crimes that Mitchell was accused and convicted of. He still has open cases left in Berks and Chester counties, but has resolved others in Bucks, Delaware, and Montgomery counties in Pennsylvania. Information of any possible cases against him in Delaware or New Jersey was not immediately available.
Mitchell’s son Jahmir was arrested in April 2023 and charged with theft from the Walmart in Tilden in Berks County, near the massive Cabela’s retail complex. The father was listed as being at large at the time of Jahmir’s arrest, but was taken into custody by police in Plymouth Meeting, Montgomery County in June 2023.
Jahmir Mitchell is now listed as a fugitive after failing to apear for a number of court appearances across the region.
The Chester County case that Jamaar Mitchell faces involves a theft that occurred at the Target Store in East Whiteland near the Route 29 interchange with Route 202 — a heavily trafficked retail complex near a busy highway.
According to East Whiteland Detective William Logan, around 8:30 p.m. on March 9, 2023, Mitchell and two others — Celinete Laboy and Saddiq Patterson — were captured on video surveillance inside the store, with Laboy and Mitchell placing items from the store into two shopping carts. Patterson was captured on video around 9:15 p.m. leaving the store while talking on his cell phone.
He got into a black Jeep and drove it to the fire exit, where he was met by Mitchell and Laboy coming out of the store with the shopping carts. The merchandise is loaded into the car, which drives away.
The store valued the items taken at $1,625.
Logan said that he met with the multi-state task force looking into the Walmart and Target thefts, and said in his affidavit that as many as 14 suspects had been identified in 92 retail theft incidents beginning in December 2022. He shared the photos he had of Mitchell, Patterson and Laboy and learned they were among the suspects identified by the task force, he said in his arrest affidavit.
Logan was also able to get imformation about Mitchell’s location on March 9, 2023 from the cell phone he was carrying when he was stopped by Plymouth Township Police in June 2023 outside a target store there. Locations and time stamps put the phone in Malvern about one mile from the East Whiteland Target on that date.
Patterson was also arrested for the theft, but his case has been put on hold as he failed to appear for court. Laboy is still at large, according to court records.
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.
Source: Berkshire mont