Detroit — Three men accused of beating and robbing the Rev. Marvin Winans while a fourth drove off in his SUV were ordered to stand trial on charges of carjacking, unarmed robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery.
Attorneys for the accused men, Montoya Givens and Christopher Moorehead, both 20, and Brian Young, 18, argued there wasn’t enough evidence shown by prosecutors that the three had anything to do with planning or executing the actual carjacking.
Givens’ Detroit-based attorney, Craig Daly, said Winans’ celebrity status caused prosecutors to invoke “selective prosecution.”
“When you look, this is really just a garden-variety unarmed robbery case,” Daly said. “They’re making additional charges based on who the victim is.”
Winans, a Grammy Award-winning singer and founding pastor of the Perfecting Church in Detroit, identified the three on Monday as the ones who punched and kicked him after he stopped to gas up his 2012 Infiniti QX56 on May 16 at a CITGO station at Linwood and Davidson.
Winans said four people followed him out of the station and that Givens was the first to punch him. Young admitted in a police interrogation to striking the minister, according to court testimony. Moorehead said he was at the gas station and saw his friends kicking and hitting Winans but only grabbed $60 in cash from the ground during the attack and ran away.
In his testimony, Winans said all three hit and beat him. Someone grabbed his keychain, about $250 from his pocket and a $20,000 Rolex watch from his wrist, he added.
When he got up, he saw the three run away and his SUV was gone. He suffered a broken left ring finger in the attack. Police are still looking for a fourth man — the person who drove the SUV.
Police the next day retrieved the Infiniti from a vacant area at Dexter and Joy, a few miles from the gas station. Police executing a search warrant days after the attack found Winans’ keychain at the home Givens gave as his address.
Judge Roberta Archer of the 36th District Court agreed there was enough evidence that the four acted together in a planned attack.
