Man gets 16 years for robbing Henrico Wachovia

Ex-soldier gets 16 years for bank robbery War veteran who had traumatic youth apologizes for pulling gun

In a voice turned hard from years of war and life on the streets, Matthew David Wilson begged forgiveness on the witness stand.

"I know what that anxiety feels like," he told two Wachovia bank tellers who had testified that an armed robbery Wilson committed left them petrified and sleepless for days.

The June 27 robbery at the bank's Gayton Crossing Shopping Center branch garnered Wilson $8,400. He was arrested less than two weeks later when he handed an attentive store clerk an ink-stained bill marked by an exploded dye pack.

Wilson, 28, was sentenced to 16 years in prison yesterday on multiple convictions linked to the robbery. The Henrico County Circuit Court case could have sent him away for life.

Circuit Judge Burnett Miller III said he was trying to balance the fear Wilson caused the women and Wilson's own woeful tale of a life on the run, a brutal childhood trauma, and years of punishing infantry duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Shannon Dillon, Wilson's lawyer, near tears in her plea for leniency, pointed to an empty courtroom, noting that none of the Henrico native's family had come to speak for him and that those he loved best, two younger sisters, had died in a rampage by Wilson's stepfather.

That was in October 1999. The sisters, 11 and 7, were shot to death at the family home in the 1300 block of Asbury Road. Wilson's mother escaped through a window as fire engulfed the house. The stepfather killed himself.

In nearly 30 minutes on the witness stand, Wilson traced years in detention or foster homes and his decision to turn to the military to escape "a life where I grew up pretty much on the streets."

"The military was the only thing left I had to hold on to," he said.

It took nearly as long for him to list his military commendations on the witness stand as it did for him to rob the bank -- about 30 seconds.

Dillon used medical and military records to chart Wilson's past and referred to multiple diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder, which still affects him. The tattooed former soldier said he never could get doctors' attention for care.

He arrived back in the U.S. in March 2008 and went AWOL, Dillon said. Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Michael V. Gerrard said that factor undermines the notion of how honestly Wilson sought work or help.

Christina Durden, who had given Wilson a place to live, told the court that he had been a compassionate friend to her family before the war. Afterward, he was lost and alone.

"Seeing him starting to unspool was a bad feeling . . . a total shock," she said.

Fearful of being arrested for absconding, Wilson came back to Virginia and was living in a car, he said. Flashbacks hounded him nightly, he said. Days at war were filled with incongruities. "One day we would hand out balls to little children; the next day we would steal dogs for food. . . . We were trained to survive at any cost."

By the time June rolled around last year, Wilson said, he was living in the car, had half a tank of gas, no money and "no one left to talk to."

He walked into the bank late in the afternoon with a .45-caliber handgun and a plastic bag.

He figured there would be minimal police presence because of a race that evening at Richmond International Raceway, he later told police.

Authorities aren't sure where or how Wilson spent $2,000 that wasn't recovered. And they are not sure what Wilson was thinking when he planned on a reduced police presence. There was no race that night, Gerrard said.

Wilson, though, was wrong about a lot of things, he admitted.

At one point yesterday on the stand, he told the court he never figured on returning to Virginia.

"I figured I'd die in Iraq."

Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or .