A Richmond County jury convicted co-defendants Shawn Joshua Johnson and Bryan Andrew Mosby of two counts of criminal attempt to commit armed robbery OCGA § 16-4-1, 16-8-41. They now appeal upon the trial court’s denial of their motions for new trial. With a single exception, Johnson and Mosby enumerate identical claims of error. As a consequence, we have consolidated their cases for disposition on appeal. Held:
The evidence of record shows that Johnson, Mosby and two others, Lionel Hall and State’s witness Stephen Fromm, were foiled in two criminal attempts to commit armed robbery, one committed in the late evening of May 12, 1998, and the second in the early morning hours of the following day. In the first of these attempts, Johnson, Mosby, Fromm and Hall fled as their victim, Regis Vann Hicks, backed his vehicle away from them at an Augusta area bank’s drive-in automated teller machine. The four had surrounded Hicks’ vehicle—Fromm driving a black Neon belonging to Sue Gross, blocked Hicks’ vehicle to the front while Johnson, Mosby, and Hall, wearing masks or bandanas and wielding at least one BB pistol, fanned out around his car. Mosby slashed the front tires of Hicks’ vehicle while Johnson or Hall, pointing a BB gun at Hicks, demanded the money that the four believed Hicks had withdrawn from the ATM as the other stood guard. In the second, the four fled once more as they attempted to rob Gregory Tyler at gunpoint in the driveway of his home—this because Tyler’s wife turned on the porch light and announced she was calling the police. Shortly thereafter, Johnson, Mosby, Fromm, and Hall were arrested after being sighted in the vicinity of a nearby hotel and briefly attempting to run. Fromm explained that the group had “stopped there just to look around to see what we could get . . . because we couldn’t come back empty handed” as “we would have gotten beat down” by their putative leader, one Steve Barnes.
