Stephen Daniel Robie (Pictured Left), a resident from Alabama, was sentenced to 8 years in prison on August 8th after being convicted of assault and reckless endangerment for a November 2013 attack on a Queen Anne’s County resident.

On November 26, 2013 Stephen Robie answered an ad placed on Craigslist by the victim and arrived in the morning hours at the Queen Anne’s County residence.  Once Robie entered the residence he attacked the victim, initially striking the victim in the head with a handheld hatchet, causing a laceration to the back of the victim’s head.  The victim was knocked to the ground by the blow to the head. Robie then attempted to handcuff the victim with plastic cable ties.  Robie was able to get one of the victim’s wrists cuffed before the victim was able to break free and began to fight back. Robie then fled the residence, but left behind a glove he was wearing that had fallen off during the attack.  The victim was subsequently treated at the Queen Anne’s County Emergency Room and required surgery to close the wound to his head.

Members of the Office of the Sheriff’s Criminal Investigation Unit seized the glove and the cable tie that had been placed on the victim’s wrist.  The victim had no prior contact with Robie and at the time of the assault the identity of the suspect was unknown.  DNA was subsequently collected from inside the glove that was left at the scene and the cable tie that had been placed on the victim’s wrist.  The DNA profile was then uploaded into a National DNA Database and a “hit” was obtained from a sample that had been placed in the database from the State of Alabama.  The DNA “hit” came back to Stephen Daniel Robie.

Further investigation revealed that Robie had traveled to Maryland from Alabama in the month before this attack and was being held in the Cecil County Detention Center on an armed robbery charge.  Police subsequently obtained a search and seizure warrant for the known DNA of Stephen Robie, which was sent to the Maryland State Police Forensic Laboratory to be compared to the DNA that had been extracted from the glove and cable tie.  The Maryland State Police lab reported that the DNA found inside the glove was that of Stephen Daniel Robie.  The DNA found on the cable tie contained the DNA of the victim and Stephen Daniel Robie.

Robie was subsequently sentenced to a prison term for the armed robbery conviction in Cecil County.  The State’s Attorney for Queen Anne’s County, Lance Richardson, decided to wait to serve the felony assault charges in this case against Robie until he was finished serving his prison sentence for the armed robbery in Cecil County.  In October of 2017 Robie was released from prison on the armed robbery charge and was served an arrest warrant in this case, he was held without bond pending trial.  Mr. Richardson then obtained a grand jury indictment against Stephen Robie in the Queen Anne’s County Circuit Court and a jury trial was scheduled for July 11th and 12th, 2018.  Robie was convicted by a jury on July 12th of 2nd degree assault and reckless endangerment.  Following his conviction, Robie was held at the Queen Anne’s County Detention Center pending an August 7th sentencing.  Robie was facing 10 years in prison.

At the sentencing hearing Mr. Richardson asked the Circuit Court Judge to sentence Robie to the maximum of 10 years in prison due to this unprovoked violent attack coupled with Robie wreaking havoc as soon as he arrived in Maryland from Alabama in 2013.  Mr. Richardson noted that Robie was only in Maryland a short time before committing an armed robbery in Cecil County and then this attack in Queen Anne’s County.  Robie also had a prior armed robbery conviction on his record from the State of Alabama.  The Judge then handed down the 8 year prison sentence to be served at the Maryland Division of Corrections.