3 suspects plead guilty to robbing Fort Worth postal worker for 'arrow key'
FORT WORTH, Texas - Three men pleaded guilty to robbing a USPS letter carrier at gunpoint in Fort Worth last year.
Jlynn Dunn, 21, Daylin Darden, 24, and D Colby Lewis, 23, pleaded guilty to robbery of mail matter, money or other property of the United States.
"In less than a year, we've made over 1,200 arrests between mail theft and robbery incidents," explained Paul Ecker with the Fort Worth Division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. "And so we're finding this to prove valuable and hoping that at some point this is going to prevent future incidents from occurring."
The 1,200 nationwide arrests are part of a USPS initiative called "Project Safe Delivery," a new emphasis on reducing crimes against postal workers.
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service says it is seeing a rise in threats and attacks on letter carriers and postal employees. Arrests for these types of crimes are up by 73% nationwide year-over-year.
The 2023 case is one of the more violent examples.
Last October, a letter carrier was parked in his USPS van at an apartment complex on Meadowood Village Drive when three men approached him with a gun and demanded his master key, according to the criminal complaint.
The letter carrier said he gave the men the key and that they ran to a small silver sedan.
A short time later, investigators were told about another robbery of a letter carrier in Arlington. The car used in that robbery matched the description of the vehicle used in the Fort Worth robbery, according to the criminal complaint.
Investigators tracked the car back to Fort Worth. When police tried to stop the vehicle, the car took off.
After a car and foot chase, Dunn was taken into custody. A search of his home found mail, checks, drugs, gun and a DVR system.
Surveillance video from Dunn’s home showed Darden leaving with a gun matching the one used in the robbery. Dunn could be seen holding a small item with a long gold chain, which is how postal workers carry their master keys.
Lewis was also identified in the video.
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A search of Dunn's Instagram showed a message shortly before the Fort Worth robbery saying, "I'm tryna go get us a key rn so I can get these real scam Money," according to police documents.
A fourth suspect in the group could not be identified from the video evidence at the time.
Kim Lewis, the local president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, put the robberies in perspective.
"The only thing that you was scared of was maybe a dog or two. But now, you have to be more conscious of everybody and everything. And where you used to be able to just laugh and talk with your customers, now you have to do that with caution." she said. "The job has become very dangerous and fearful. It is way worse than it was when I first began."
The three men face up to 10 years in federal prison. They will be sentenced on Sept. 3.