A man convicted of leading a bank robbery crew that stole nearly $400,000 across four separate San Diego County hold-ups was sentenced Monday to nearly 500 years to life in state prison.
Prosecutors said Larry Lightning Jr., 45, took part in armed robberies at banks in Escondido, Scripps Ranch, Kearny Mesa, and Carlsbad between 2019 and 2022.
During the hold-ups, the robbers displayed firearms and assaulted bank employees. Prosecutors alleged that Lightning took part in those assaults, which included shoving bank employees and dragging them by their hair.
At one point, Lightning leveled a gun at employees and threatened to kill them, including by counting down in order to spur them to open the banks’ safes faster, according to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office.
The crew targeted banks close to freeways in order to allow for a quick escape and used stolen cars as their getaway vehicles, prosecutors said.
But Lightning was tied to the robbery crew through one of those stolen vehicles, where investigators found his DNA in the vehicle’s driver’s seat. He was arrested in 2023.
Lightning was found guilty by a San Diego jury of more than two dozen felony counts, including 10 kidnapping counts, 12 assault with a firearm counts, and four robbery counts.
Due to prior convictions triggering California’s Three Strikes Law, Lightning received multiple, consecutive sentences of 25 years to life, leading to a total prison term of 488 years and eight months to life.
At Lightning’s sentencing hearing, Deputy Public Defender Jimmy Rodriguez argued that despite the jury’s findings, the evidence was circumstantial, with “no direct evidence linking Mr. Lightning to this case.” Rodriguez said Lightning intended to take those issues up on appeal.
San Diego Superior Court Judge Polly Shamoon agreed the case was circumstantial, but said it was “one of the strongest this court has ever seen.”
The judge also rebuked Lightning for the “terror” inflicted on bank employees, which she said was intentional.
“It wasn’t enough for you to rob these victims. You had to humiliate them,” Shamoon told Lightning. “You had to make sure that they knew that they had their lives in your hand. When you went to that vault and you counted down, their lives flashed before their eyes and you thrived on that.”
Prior to imposing the sentence, Shamoon heard statements from some of those employees, who described living in near-constant paranoia and fear after returning to work.
San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said in a statement released after the sentencing, “This defendant orchestrated a terrifying crime spree that put the lives of bank workers and community members in danger.
“Thanks to the dedicated work of our prosecutors and law enforcement partners, he has been held accountable for his crimes and the fear and harm he caused. While the defendant proved elusive for years, law enforcement never gave up its work to solve this string of crimes.”
Lightning is also facing a pending case for allegedly trying to escape from custody while jailed in connection with the robberies.
Some of Lightning’s accomplices remain unknown, though prosecutors identified one of the other robbers as Gregory Moore, who was fatally shot in 2023 in Lemon Grove in an apparently unrelated incident.
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