Two suspects of an Oct. 18 armed robbery at the Verizon Wireless store on Huntington Drive were captured on store surveillance footage before they fled in a car driven by a third suspect.
Officers with the San Marino Police Department are investigating the third armed robbery of a cellphone retailer in town this year after it was held up last week.
Including an overnight burglary in August, this is the fourth time the store has been targeted by criminals this year.
By the time officers arrived to the Verizon Wireless store at 2116 Huntington Drive on Wednesday, Oct. 18, the suspects in that robbery had already fled. Officers responded at 1:33 p.m. that day and the suspects made off with a safe’s worth of cellphones.
“We learned Verizon stores are being targeted because a Verizon iPhone with a bad electronic serial number is no good in the U.S. but can still be sold and used oversees,” SMPD Sgt. Tim Tebbetts said in an email.
Surveillance footage showed two suspects entering the Verizon store at 1:25 p.m. that day. One of them, a mid-20s black man around 5 feet, 11 inches tall with a medium build and wearing a black hooded vest jacket, a black long sleeved shirt, black jeans and black basketball shoes, used a handgun to order store employees to the ground.
A second suspect, also a mid-20s black man around 5 feet, 11 inches tall with a medium build, but with a “scraggly” beard and wearing a black baseball cap, black mask, green camouflaged hooded jacket, black gloves, black jeans and gray Vans shoes, was shown taking the phones from the safe, according to SMPD.
The two suspects were then shown leaving the store through the back door, where a nondescript third suspect had backed up a 2006-2013 model Chevrolet Impala sedan with tinted windows, silver rims and a Cerritos Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep/Ram rear paper license plate. All three drove off at 1:31 p.m., heading west down the alley toward Westhaven Road.
This is the third time this year this Verizon store was robbed at gunpoint, the first being in the evening hours of April 5, in which 28 iPhones were stolen, and second being in the evening hours of Sept. 30, which yielded 40 more stolen iPhones. In a related incident, 57 iPhones were reported stolen in an early morning commercial burglary of the store on Aug. 13.
Those with information related to this recent robbery are urged to contact Detective Naved Qureshi at (626) 300-0728.
