Bucks County carjacker who threatened victims with hypodermic needles sentenced to state prison
Kevin O'Connell told two women he was HIV-positive when he forced them out of their vehicles in 2022. His lawyer said he has expressed remorse for his actions.
A man who carjacked two people while brandishing hypodermic needles and burglarized two homes in Lower Bucks County in a five-month span has been sentenced to 11 to 25 years in state prison, investigators said Tuesday.
Kevin O’Connell, 41, entered a no-contest plea to robbery of a motor vehicle, reckless endangerment, aggravated assault, and related crimes Monday in the carjackings. In both cases, prosecutors said, he threatened his victims with a needle that he said was contaminated with HIV. And in one attack, he forced an 83-year-old woman out of her Toyota Camry, causing her injuries that required treatment at a hospital.
Both times, O’Connell was arrested in Kensington, still inside the stolen vehicles, according to investigators.
Bucks County District Attorney Jen Schorn said in a statement that O’Connell was “a violent offender who went to extraordinary lengths to rob and steal.”
“Thankfully, carjackings in Bucks County are relatively rare, and given what occurred in this case, the hope is that anyone who may be contemplating carrying out such a violent offense, thinks twice,” she said.
O’Connell also pleaded guilty to two burglaries: one at a home in Bristol Township in March 2022 where he stole $20,000 from a safe, and another two months later in Tullytown in which he broke into a garage and stole $5,000 worth of tools.
His attorney, Christopher Serpico, said Tuesday that he felt the sentence handed down by Bucks County Court Judge Jeffrey Finley was fair. O’Connell was in the throes of a severe addiction to heroin and fentanyl at the time the crimes were committed and was “half out of his mind” while dealing with the then-recent deaths of his half-brother and mother, Serpico said.
O’Connell was experiencing homeless and living on the street at the time, Serpico said, because his grandmother, with whom he had been living, had been hospitalized and forced to give up her home.
“He was anxious to have this resolved and move on with his life,” Serpico said. “He expressed remorse. Apparently 2022 was the worst year of his life, though that doesn’t excuse anything obviously.”
In the first carjacking, in March 2022, O’Connell approached a woman in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in Levittown, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. As the victim parked her Chevrolet Trax, O’Connell opened the vehicle’s passenger door and climbed inside, ordering her to get out and threatening her with a needle.
The woman left and took her keys, but the vehicle’s keyless ignition system allowed O’Connell to drive away. Through the car’s GPS system, OnStar, police were able to track it to Kensington, with O’Connell still inside it, the affidavit said.
Five months later, O’Connell approached a second woman in the parking lot of a LabCorp in Bristol. Investigators gave this account of what happened next:
O’Connell asked the 83-year-old for a dollar to buy him a drink. When the woman refused, he followed her to her Toyota Camry, got into the vehicle and grabbed her keys, saying he was going to “give her a shot” with a needle.
The woman honked the car’s horn, drawing the attention of passersby. O’Connell threw the car’s keys on the ground and promised to walk away. But when the woman went to retrieve them, he quickly grabbed them and took control of the car, throwing her from the vehicle.