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Three Charged in St. John's University Dorm Armed Robbery

 Three Queens men were charged in an armed robbery at St. John's University.
Three Queens men were charged in an armed robbery at St. John's University.
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QUEENS — The Queens District Attorney charged three Queens men Thursday for an armed burglary at St. John’s University.

The three men, Tyrell Sutton, 17, Mustafa Godbolt, 21, and Anthony Gusthas, 18, all of Queens, entered Hollis Hall on Wednesday May 11 at about 1:20 p.m.

Gusthas knocked on the door of a student’s room on the fifth floor. The student inside looked through the peep hole and recognized Gusthas as a former student of St. John's and began to open the door when the three men forced their way into the room, according to the charges.

Sutton then pulled out a knife as Godbolt demanded to know where the money was. When the student said they did not have money, Godbolt pulled out a black revolver. The gun then went off, but did not hit anyone, according to the criminal charges.

“The defendants are accused of shattering the tranquility of the St. John’s campus by bursting into an occupied dorm room in the middle of the afternoon armed with a knife and a revolver and firing a gunshot as part of an attempted robbery," Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said in a statement. "The alleged incident could have easily gone horribly wrong but fortunately nobody was physically injured."

Shortly after the incident, a police officer observed the three defendants walking on 167th Street and the Grand Central Parkway service road and saw Sutton drop a backpack and Godbolt drop a jar on the ground when he approached them, according to the DA's statement.

Police recovered duct tape, rope, scissors and a loaded .38-caliber Smith and Wesson black revolver with three live rounds of ammunition and a shell casing in the chamber from the backpack. They also recovered 150 Alprazolam (Xanax) pills from the jar and a .38-caliber round of ammunition from the dorm room, according to the DA’s report.

The three defendants were expected to be arraigned Thursday in Queens Criminal Court on charges of first-degree burglary, first-degree attempted robbery, second- and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon and fifth-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance.

The defendants each face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.