- March 6, 2025
Within a 30-hour period last summer, Aaron Kinney walked into three gas stations, pulled out a 12-inch hunting knife at each of them and told the clerks to empty their cash registers.
“I’m sorry for doing this to you,” he said as he left, according to witnesses.
That was one of three gas stations he robbed within 30 hours on July 21 and 22, 2012.
Kinney stood before a judge Monday morning, his hands cuffed and bound to his chest by a length of chain that circled his waist. His attorney reached into the chest pocket of Kinney’s orange, jail-issued jumpsuit, pulled out a piece of paper, unfolded it and handed it to Kinney, who read from it an apology and explanation.
Kinney said a man with a revolver barged into his home around 11 a.m. July 21 and demanded money Kinney owed the man’s brother. If he didn’t pay, the man said, he would hurt Kinney and his mother. But Kinney didn’t have the money.
“Then we’re going for a ride,” the man said, according to Kinney.
Kinney said that is why he robbed three gas stations in a period of 30 hours. He didn’t want to do it; he was worried for his own life and for his mother’s safety, he said.
Kinney, who lived with his mother at the time of the robberies, said the man stayed with him from around 11 a.m. June 21 until just before he was apprehended the following evening. The man, whose name Kinney said he didn’t know, stayed hidden overnight in Kinney’s closet, he said.
The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office responded to the following robberies, all perpetrated by a suspect of similar appearance, wearing the same clothing: at 1:17 p.m. July 21, a clerk at the Shell gas station on North Old Kings Road was robbed of $395; at 12:10 p.m. on July 22, a clerk at the BP gas station on South Old Dixie Highway was robbed of $167.32; at 7 p.m. July 22, a clerk at the Mobil gas station on East State Road 100 refused to give money to a would-be robber.
Shortly after the last robbery, deputies conducted a felony traffic stop on a vehicle matching the one seen in surveillance video from the robberies. According to an incident report, Kinney was uncooperative with deputies and resisted his arrest.
Kinney was the only person in his car at the time of the traffic stop. In court Monday, Kinney said that the man who had forced him into the robberies saw approaching patrol cars and made Kinney let him out of the car.
“I am very ashamed of what I did,” Kinney said. “These are people who worked. Three of them, I knew. … When I go to sleep at night, I see their faces and it makes me feel ashamed.”
But Kinney insisted he was acting under duress, even as prosecution asked how an armed man could have stayed in Kinney’s home overnight without his mother noticing.
“What strikes me,” Walsh said before imposing sentence, “is that the three offenses were committed within the short span of 24 to 30 hours. I am also aware that you, Mr. Kinney, have no recent history of violent offenses.”
The most serious crime on Kinney’s record is a petit larceny charge from 2000. Attorney Brett Kocijan said Kinney’s relatively clean record shows how out of character the robberies were.
“On the other hand, I do not accept your explanation at all,” Walsh said, his normally level voice rising. “OK? These are violent offenses. These are offenses so serious that the state allows them to be punished by life in prison.”
Walsh sentenced Kinney to nine years in prison for each of the three robberies, with 281 days of credit for time served as he awaited sentencing. Each concurrent nine-year sentence will be followed by five years of probation, with the special condition that Kinney have no contact with the victims of the crimes, complete an anti-theft course and complete 100 hours of community service.
