A Brooklyn man charged with four gunpoint robberies — after matching a police sketch and being identified by all the victims — was cleared yesterday after his cellphone records proved his innocence.
Lanell Dowling was arrested in April 2010 after someone saw the sketch and tipped off police. He was such a dead ringer for the sketch, the local precinct commander said the resemblance was uncanny.
“I’ve never seen something like that before,” Inspector Corey Pegues told the Courier-Life newspapers at the time.
The tipster told cops that the man hung out on Church Avenue, and that his nickname was “Country.”
He was arrested in Queens after cops tracked him down by the signal from his cellphone — which is ultimately what saved him from many years in prison.
The robberies, which occurred on March 20 and March 29 of last year, were particularly vicious. In both, the robber pistol-whipped his middle-aged, female victims.
Bail was set at $100,000, and Dowling spent seven months in jail, until Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach lowered it to $20,000 in October.
A search warrant executed at Dowling’s East Flatbush home turned up no evidence of the crime, and after cellphone records placed Dowling away from the crime scenes, the Brooklyn DA’s Office asked Justice Suzanne Mondo to dismiss the charges.
“I’m happy it’s over,” said Dowling, 26. “It was a long time they locked me up over nothing. My family can be at peace now.”
His lawyer, Jay Schwitzman, who unearthed the phone records, noted that Dowling had passed a polygraph test and that there was no other physical evidence against him.
“It really shows how [witness] identification in general is a very dangerous process because people often misidentify,” Schwitzman said.
Outside court, Dowling’s mother, Denise, wept with relief.
“It’s been a long 14½ months,” she said. “I always had faith in my son.”