Man Googles Sentence for Robbery Days Before Carjacking Victim

July 22, 2022 – A Mississippi man pled guilty Thursday to stealing a Dodge Charger at gunpoint in 2019 after responding to the owner’s online ad offering it for sale, said Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich.

Xavier Young, 29, from Benton, Miss., pled guilty to carjacking in Criminal Court and was sentenced to 7.2 years. He is being held in the Shelby County Jail on a similar case pending in Texas.

Young responded to a Craigslist ad placed by an Arkansas car dealer and arranged to meet with him on July 29, 2019, at the Southgate Shopping Center on South Third in Memphis. While taking test drive, however, Young pulled a gun, ordered the owner out of the car and drove off.

Young, who used a false name, was developed as a suspect and was arrested in February of 2020 in Richland, Miss., while driving a Lexus that had been stolen at gunpoint from a seller five days earlier in Dallas. He is facing criminal charges in both locations.

Shortly before the Memphis incident, Young searched the internet by cell phone for information on how much time a robbery charge carries, how to block vehicle GPS tracking devices and “how to drain a PayPal account.”

The case was handled by Asst. Dist. Atty. Forrest Edwards of the District Attorney’s Vertical Team 3 which prosecutes cases in General Sessions Division 11 and in Criminal Court Division 3.