SAN ANTONIO – The man police called the "North Side Robber," Melvin McNeil, 39, has been sentenced to 60 years in prison for robbing a North side Subway restaurant in April.
Police said McNeil used a toy gun in the robbery -- the same gun he used when prosecutors said he robbed nine other businesses here from December 2010 until the April 2011 heist.
Referring to the gun, Jim Oltersdorf, McNeil's attorney, said, "It's a BB gun. The ballistics experts said that it was just a BB gun. It looks like a gun but it won't fire anything but BBs."
He asked the judge to take that into consideration when assessing punishment.
Prosecutors argued that the gun looked real to McNeil's victims.
McNeil is still awaiting trial on nine other robbery cases pending against him.