Clerk pistol-whipped in a robbery helps cops track down Texas gun trafficker, feds say

A gun trafficker caught after a violent gas station robbery is going to prison, federal prosecutors say.

Quick thinking by the store clerk helped cops track him down.

Jesse Bell, 26, and another man robbed a Valero gas station in Mesquite, Texas, in June 2017, pistol-whipping the clerk who was stocking the store freezer, prosecutors say.

They took money from his wallet, 68 packs of cigarettes and about $343 from the cash register, prosecutors say. Then Bell and the other robber got into a getaway vehicle driven by Ciera Washington, 23.

However, they didn’t realize the clerk had slipped a tracking device into the cash he gave to Bell, according to a news release.

Cops used the tracker to find the suspects and tried pull over the car, prosecutors say. That led to a high-speed chase, which ended when the car slammed into a curb.

Washington, who was pregnant at the time, was taken into custody at the crash site, but Bell and the other man escaped, prosecutors say. Police found Bell’s identification, two firearms, the clerk’s wallet and the tracker inside a cash bag inside the car.

He was arrested several weeks later.

During a sentencing hearing, a prosecutors said that Bell, a felon, had sold an undercover agent firearms over several months.

Bell was sentenced to 17 years in prison on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm, interference with commerce by robbery and brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence. Washington, who pleaded guilty to interference with commerce by robbery, was sentenced to five years in prison.

“This case clearly demonstrates violent offenders shouldn’t be allowed to carry firearms — much less sell them,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Erin Nealy Cox said in the news release.