Hella Nation - Evan Wright [68]
According to Swindle, Guk reassured him that the FedEx driver had been paid off. He would look the other way when the high school kids unloaded his truck. The whole job would take a minute or two.
Swindle told Britt he initially reasoned that the job didn’t exactly seem like a robbery since everyone, including the driver, was in on it. He told Guk, “For seven hundred dollars, count me in.”
The next day, Guk came by Dusty’s house and told him they needed to meet Simberg and another guy whom Guk referred to as the “Big Boss.” They drove to an apartment across town where Simberg lived. Simberg’s car was parked in front, a black Camaro that was easily identifiable because it was missing a hood and the windshield was cracked. Inside the apartment, Swindle met Simberg—tall, gangly, dark-haired, with a stubbly beard, wearing baggy hip-hop clothes and a sideways baseball cap. When Simberg spoke, his accent was so heavy Swindle could barely understand a word he said.
Simberg informed Swindle and Guk that they would follow him in his car to go pick up another kid involved in the plot. Simberg led them to a motel-style courtyard apartment across town. It was built around a pool, which had been drained and was now filled with old shopping carts and trash. Simberg walked Swindle and Guk up to an apartment occupied by an eighteen-year-old named Tom Southerland. He had dropped out of North Phoenix High the previous year, and lived in a one-bedroom apartment with his mother and two infant siblings. Southerland’s job would be to drive the U-Haul truck that they would load with the boxes taken from the FedEx truck.
After they picked up Southerland, Simberg led the small gang he’d assembled to a cul-de-sac where they were to be inspected by the “Big Boss.” Along the way, two other North Phoenix High students met them in their cars. Simberg told everyone to wait inside their vehicles until he told them to get out.
Dusty Swindle saw a black BMW 750 with smoked-out windows stop about a hundred yards from the cul-de-sac. Guk told Swindle the BMW belonged to the “Big Boss.” Simberg stepped out of his car holding a cell phone to his ear, from which he was apparently receiving instructions from the “Big Boss.” He told each kid to step out of his car, one at a time, turn around and get back in. When the last kid had done so, the BMW with tinted windows drove off.
The next morning, September 24, Swindle told Britt he cut school and met up with Simberg and the gang of kids at a nearby Wendy’s. There were a total of six guys spread between two cars and the U-Haul. Dodging police, who they feared would stop them for ditching school, Swindle says they converged at the parking lot by Peak Physique at about ten. Simberg handed out latex medical gloves, then wandered off shouting in Russian on his cell phone.
Simberg returned a few minutes later, highly nervous. Speaking in a combination of broken English and Russian that Guk translated, he told the gang there was a change in plan. The FedEx driver who was supposed to show up that day and allow the robbery to take place had called in sick. Simberg told the kids in the gang he needed volunteers to step forward and help him “take the truck by force.” He offered $10,000 to anyone who would join him.
Recounting this to Britt, Swindle said the gang was unfazed by the change of plan. He and his friends reasoned “there was a bunch of us and one dorky driver. We could beat him up and throw him through the little door in the back.”
As the FedEx truck pulled into the parking lot, the six boys followed Simberg across the asphalt toward it. Swindle noticed a man, about thirty, with “a very powerful build” sitting in a silver Infiniti parked a hundred feet away. Swindle assumed he was the “Big Boss,” especially after he began waving frantically to Simberg, urging him forward.
But when the boys neared the FedEx truck, Simberg told them to stop. He had apparently lost his stomach for