Trio in Super Pawn hostage standoff receive leniency

Bill Gang

Thursday, Oct. 21, 1999 | 10:55 a.m.

The three convicted would-be robbers in the Super Pawn hostage standoff knew the lightest sentence would require they spend at least 10 years in prison.

The question was how much more prison time would District Judge Joseph Bonaventure heap upon them for their varied levels of involvement in the March 4 crime.

Maximum sentences would have kept them imprisoned for the rest of their lives, but at the end of Wednesday's hearing the judge chose to lean toward leniency.

Deputy District Attorney David Schwartz called the standoff "one of the most horrific crimes in the city's history" and asked for harsh sentences, although he conceded that no one had been killed or seriously injured.

Stephanie Lark, who worked at the store and let the others inside, already knew from the time of her conviction on Aug. 19 that her three children would be growing up without her.

One of those children was fathered by co-defendant Tarz Mitchell and would grow up with both parents behind bars.

The third convict, Howard Benjamin, lamented that his participation in the nationally televised incident was "something very out of character for me and wouldn't have happened if I had used the brain God gave me."

In the end, the judge gave Lark, 31, the minimum sentence under the law of 10 to 30 years in prison.

Benjamin, 27, received a 12- to 35-year term, and Mitchell was given the harshest sentence of the three with a sentence of 15 to 63 years. Mitchell, 31, was alleged to have been the mastermind of the ineptly executed incident.

The trio will have to serve their minimum sentences before they will even be eligible for parole.

"This was a botched robbery that went horribly downhill," Bonaventure said, noting that the bandits had the opportunity to surrender peacefully but chose to stretch out the event into a six-hour standoff with hostages being used as human shields.

"The psychological scarring most likely will last forever," the judge said.

Schwartz said there was the "potential for a catastrophic result" because of the more than 100 police officers involved, including sharpshooters and SWAT teams. A police helicopter had circled constantly overhead and an armored vehicle sat at the ready.

At several points during the standoff, hostages were released.

One of those was Lark, who unsuccessfully tried to portray herself as one of the victims.

But when she walked from the store at 3252 Las Vegas Blvd. North she was carrying more than $11,000 in cash and jewelry belonging to Super Pawn that was hidden in her panty hose.

During the trial Schwartz showed the jury that a .380-caliber pistol Mitchell and Benjamin used to terrorize the hostages had been stolen by Lark from Super Pawn before the robbery.

The attorneys for the men had argued that there was only one bullet in the gun and the hostages were never in any real danger.

"Common sense tells you this was anything but a simple robbery gone bad," Schwartz told the jury during closing arguments at the trial. "The three defendants turned March 4 into a living hell for five people."

Although the holdup began as a well-planned event, the bandits didn't know that two corporate officials were inside with the three regular employees. Those officials, who were in a tiny office, called 911 after barricading the door.

The pair spent the next four hours in the windowless office with no ventilation before one became ill and they were forced to surrender to the gunmen.

During that four hours the robbers threatened to shoot through the door and tried to pry their way inside with a crowbar.

The corporate employees were at the store for an embezzlement investigation that was targeting Lark.