Two suspects in a triple murder-robbery at a convenience store in rural North Carolina were released from prison — one after serving nine years — just a matter of weeks before they were arrested in connection with the April 1 slayings.

The crime took place as three employees at Hustle Mart in Farmville, N.C. — including the teenage son of the owner and his two cousins — were preparing to close for the night. Three armed men with their faces all or partly covered covered burst in the store to rob it. They also apparently shot the employees despite no obvious signs that the victims had tried to resist. A customer discovered the bodies shortly after the perpetrators left, around 10 p.m.

The three victims were Mokbel Mohamed Almujanhi, 16 – known at his high school as "Sam" — Nabil Nasser Saeed Al’mogannahi, 26, and Gaber Alawi, 24.

Surveillance video from the scene of the crime and tips from the public led police to arrest four suspects on April 4:  Antwan Andre Anthony, 29; Xavier Montel Shamble, 19; Willie Whitehead, 23, and a fourth male whose name was not disclosed because he is a minor.

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Each is charged with three counts of murder and a combination of other crimes including first-degree kidnapping, robbery, and possession of firearm by a felon.

One of those suspects, Antwan Anthony, had spent most of the past decade in Connecticut prisons before being released on Jan. 21, according to a report by the Hartford Courant, citing prison records. He was allowed to serve out a five-year parole in North Carolina where he has family, the report said.

Anthony was initially jailed in 2002 on second-degree assault charges, the paper reported. He had three subsequent convictions, while in prison, for assaulting prison guards — each time extending his sentence, the report said.

Anthony was "a very difficult inmate," according to a Connecticut correctional official quoted by Greenville area newspaper, the Daily Reflector. The official said that his behavior prompted more than 100 disciplinary reports while he was incarcerated in that state.

Corrections personnel told the Courant that Anthony committed a fourth assault, in Sept. 2010, that was not charged.

State police were called into investigate after Anthony allegedly head-butted an officer while being transported, and an arrest warrant was submitted to the state's attorney's office in Tolland, a spokesman for the union that represents Connecticut’s corrections officers told the Courant.

"We had no idea why he wasn't prosecuted and that didn't sit well with the men and women in the state prison system,'' Larry Dorman, spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 4 which, represents prison guards, told the Courant.

Police hunt for suspects in triple murder-robbery in rural N. Carolina

Another of the four suspects, Xavier Montel Shamble, 19, had been out of a North Carolina prison for just three weeks when he allegedly took part in the crime that left three young men dead, records from the North Carolina Department of Corrections show.

The records also reveal a history of repeat convictions for the third suspect, Willie Whitehead, 23, who had served time for offenses including robbery with a dangerous weapon and larceny dating back to 2004. He was released after serving time for his last conviction -- for possession of a weapon by a felon -- last August.

The three adult suspects are being held in Pitt County Detention Center in North Carolina. Police did not release the whereabouts of the underage suspect.

In surveillance videos, the victims, whose family is originally from Yemen, did not appear to put up any kind of resistance to the robbers during the April 1 encounter, said Christy Wallace, public information director for the Pitts County sheriff’s office.

“There wasn’t anything they could have done differently,” she said.

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Three suspects were arrested in connection with the robbery and triple killing in the rural community of Farmville, N.C., the Pitt County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.

The crime took place Sunday night at a convenience store on a sparsely populated road as three employees — the teen son of the owner and his two cousins — were preparing to close for the night. A customer discovered the shooting victims shortly after the perpetrators left, around 10 p.m.

The bloody crime shook this normally quiet community. Farmville has a population of about 4,500 and is more than an hour's drive east of Raleigh. County and town law enforcers had been on a 24/7 manhunt before the arrests.

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Sheriff Neil Elks announced the arrests of the two men and an unnamed juvenile Wednesday morning: Antwan Andre Anthony, 29, of Bethel; Xavier Montel Shamble, 19, of Farmville; and a Farmville juvenile were brought in late Tuesday night for questioning. 

Each was charged with three counts of murder on Wednesday morning, and each was charged with other charges, including first-degree kidnapping, robbery and possession of firearm by a felon.

The three victim, whose families came from Yemen, were Mokbel Mohamed Almujanhi, 16 — known at his high school as "Sam" — Nabil Nasser Saeed Al’mogannahi, 26, and Gaber Alawi, 24.

In the surveillance tape, the three men did not appear to put up any kind of resistance to the robbers, said Christy Wallace, public information director for the Sheriff’s Office.

"There wasn’t anything they could have done differently," she said.

Surveillance cameras in the Hustle Mart store captured the crimes in graphic "very disturbing" detail, according to Wallace, though faces of the perpetrators were covered or obscured.

The family did not know the three people arrested, according to a report by the local Daily Reflector that cited Tony Muhssen, a spokesman for the victims’ family.

"The family is still trying to recover from all of this, but it is a great relief," he told the paper, referring to the arrests.

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Law enforcers in a rural North Carolina community on Tuesday were engaged in an “all hands on deck” manhunt for three suspects who robbed an isolated convenience store and shot to death three young men working there, according to a report from NBC affiliate station WITN.

Victims at the Hustle Mart 3 on a sparsely populated county road in Farmville, N.C. were identified by the sheriff’s office as Nabil Nasser Saeed Al’mogannahi , 26, Gaber Alawi, 24 and Mokbel (Sam) Mohamed Almujanhi, 16.

One of the victims was found dead on the scene and the other two later died at a hospital, the local Daily Reflector newspaper reported Tuesday.

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The three employees, including the store owner’s teenage son and two cousins, were closing the store when three men with handguns burst in and demanded money, the newspaper reported.

After taking an undisclosed amount of cash and a pack of cigarettes, the gunmen shot all three employees, even though they offered no resistance, officials quoted by WITN said. A customer who entered the store at about 10 p.m. found the victims and called 911, WITN reported.

Pitts County sheriff Neil Elks said his office has been “all hands on deck” since the shootings which took place, about 10 p.m. Sunday evening, WITN reported.

"We have been working this case as hard as we can since Sunday night," Elks told the station. "Our deputies have been canvassing the area, going door to door and following every lead that we have. These are dangerous men we are dealing with, and we are determined to catch them as fast as possible."

On Monday, the sheriff's office released photos of the suspects taken from the store's surveillance video, in an effort to generate tips. It also released a short clip of the video from the robbery, but not the very graphic portion that captured the murders, according to Christy Wallace, the sheriff's public information director.

The family and Crimestoppers have offered a $10,000 reward for tips leading to arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators.

The sheriff's department has received a steady stream of tips since the images and a short portion of the surveillance video were made public, said Wallace.

"It's keeping the detectives adrenalin up and keeping them so encouraged," she said Tuesday evening, adding that some had hardly slept since Sunday. "They are still at work right now."

Farmville has a population of about 4,500 located and is located about 71 miles east of Raleigh, N.C.

"The people had been at this store for years," Wallace said of the family. "They were well known and loved by the community."

Students from Farmville Central High School, where the youngest victim was a 10th-grade student, held a candlelight vigil Monday night outside the store for Almujanhi, who told friends to call him Sam because they had difficulty pronouncing his name.

A funeral for the three victims, who were originally from Yemen, was held Tuesday Al-Masjid Islamic Center and Mosque in Greenville, N.C., the Daily Reflector reported.

"This is very hard," a spokesman for the family, Tony Muhssen, said during a news conference in Farmville on Tuesday, the Reflector reported. "We lost three. The family just can't understand."

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