The Lottery Ticket

by dedalus

Shortly before midnight on July 17, Brenda Rogers heard a noise outside the home and Kelvin Robinson decided to investigate. Upon exiting the home, Robinson was suddenly jumped by Willis, who had apparently been hiding behind Robinson's truck.

Willis struck Robinson in the head with a gun and demanded money. Robinson responded that he did not have any money, but Willis insisted that he had been told otherwise.

During the ensuing struggle, a green Ford Explorer made its way up the road. Tolbert then jumped from the vehicle and twice struck Robinson on the back of the head with a knife. Both Tolbert and Willis had guns, and one of them again struck Robinson in the head with a firearm before pulling him into the house.

Meanwhile, unaware of what had just transpired outside, Brenda Rogers was in the kitchen when she noticed through her peripheral vision that a strange man (Tolbert) was inside the house. And when she asked where Robinson was, Tolbert grabbed Rogers by the throat and said he would show her.

Tolbert then proceeded to drag Rogers through the house to the living room, demanding to know where to find “the money,” but Rogers did not know what Tolbert meant.

When they reached the living room, Rogers saw that Willis was holding Robinson at gunpoint, his bleeding head resting between his legs. Willis also used his knee to repeatedly strike Robinson in the face and ribs, proclaiming that he wanted to “put a cap in Robinson's ass” and that he “wasn't going to leave witnesses.”

As this continued, Tolbert pushed Rogers into a chair, took out a pair of latex gloves from a duffle bag, and then used his knife to tear apart sheets from Robinson's bed, the remnants of which Tolbert used to bind Robinson's hands and feet.

Willis, on the other hand, turned his attention to Rogers and demanded that she remove her panties and spread her legs. Fearing for her life, Rogers complied and begged the men not to kill her.

Tolbert then approached Rogers, pulled her out of the chair by her throat, and made her lead him through the house in search of money. Rogers supplied Tolbert with a key to a safe kept in the bathroom, and she was then led back into the living room. Tolbert then retrieved Robinson and made him hop through the home to another room.

While Tolbert and Robinson were out of the room, Willis forced Rogers at gunpoint to perform oral sex on him. This assault ended when Tolbert returned and said that it was time to go, but Willis made Rogers follow them to the door. Once there, Willis pulled up Rogers's shirt and placed his mouth on her breasts before leaving the home.

Rogers immediately shut and locked the door, watched Tolbert and Willis leave in the green Ford Explorer, and then freed Robinson, whose face was severely beaten and covered in blood. Robinson and Rogers were unable to unlock the door to the home to escape because Tolbert had taken the keys.

As a result, Rogers was forced to crawl through a window to call the police from a nearby home owned by Robinson's sister. Rogers scratched and bruised her legs while crawling through the window, and both she and Robinson spent the night at a hospital after law enforcement arrived.

Rogers was examined by a sexual-assault nurse examiner, and Robinson was treated for a broken nose, cracked ribs, and multiple lacerations to his face and head.

While their victims were left with injuries, Tolbert and Willis made off with Robinson's cell phone, approximately $130 in cash, and a prank lottery ticket.

Because neither Robinson nor Rogers recognized the perpetrators, the police were left to piece together Tolbert and Willis's identities. The ensuing investigation revealed that prior to the robbery, Robinson kept the fake lottery ticket inside his truck. He would use the ticket, which he claimed to be a winner worth $10,000, to play practical jokes on his friends.

And when questioned by law enforcement soon after the incident, Robinson recalled that a family friend, Kristian Kizziah, had been fooled by the ticket the day before the robbery.

The investigators thereafter discovered that Kizziah was a paramour of Willis. Kizziah testified that she was shown the prank lottery ticket when she drove Robinson around town on July 16 and that she believed the ticket to be genuine. Later that night, she mentioned the ticket to Willis, and he asked to borrow her cell phone.

Willis made a call, returned, asked Kizziah a few more questions regarding the ticket's appearance, and then stated that Tolbert was going to come over and that Kizziah should show them where Robinson lived. Kizziah then rode along with Tolbert and Willis in Tolbert's green Ford Explorer and, unsure of Willis's intentions, pointed out Robinson's home.

Tolbert and Willis then returned to Kizziah's home the next day with a duffle bag that contained latex gloves and masks. At that point, Kizziah finally surmised the duo's nefarious intentions but did not call the police.

Before the two men departed, Kizziah noticed a gun in Tolbert's waistband, and Willis borrowed a realistic-looking toy gun from her nephew. Kizziah was contacted by police the next day, but not before Willis called her to complain that the lottery ticket was fake and that they had beaten Robinson “for nothing.”