(Bridgeport, CT – March 20, 2014) – A teenaged robber had ordered pizza from his cell phone with a just-stolen credit card.
The larcenous act provided detectives with a key lead when one of the detectives remembered the same cell phone number in connection with another January robbery he investigated.
Now the same teen will face charges in connection with a second robbery.
On Jan. 13, a mugging victim came to police headquarters for an interview with Detectives Martin Heanue and Jorge Cintron about a street robbery that had happened on Jan. 2 on Beechwood Avenue. She was walking home and reached her door when she was grabbed from behind and had her purse stolen by two males.
In the interview, she also told police that her visa card was used to purchase food from a Stratford pizza restaurant about two hours after the mugging. She had used a GPS locator a day after the robbery that told her that her stolen iPhone was in the area of 154 Alex St.
When the detectives followed up and visited the pizza shop, an employee stated the food was delivered to 203 Alex St. and provided the phone number from which the order was placed.
Certain details jumped out.
“I remembered the phone number” from the earlier case, said Heanue. He also recalled that the robbery suspect in the other case was arrested at a friend’s house on Alex Street.
That robbery happened on Hollister Avenue on Jan. 5, three days after the purse snatching. Heanue and Cintron were assigned to that case as well.
In the Jan. 5 robbery, the teenaged victim, from West Hartford, stated that he had arranged to buy a pair of Air Jordan sneakers on a Facebook page called “Connecticut Sneaker Exchange.” The alleged seller used a profile name and the two corresponded to negotiate a selling price.
When he and his father came to the arranged location, they were robbed. Police were able to identify one of the suspects with his Facebook profile picture. The victim also provided the suspect’s cell phone number.
That detail proved to be key in the Jan. 2 robbery investigation.
As Heanue and Cintron began investigating the earlier robbery from Jan. 2, they realized that the cell phone used to order the pizza was the same one provided by the victim for the suspect in the Jan. 5 robbery.
They also noted that the pizza delivered to Alex Street was taken to a location in the same block as where the teen suspect had been arrested.
The detectives showed the purse-snatching victim a photo array that contained the suspect’s photo and she picked out the suspect.
The suspect has been in custody since his arrest on Jan. 5. A judge signed a warrant charging the youth, who has since turned 18, with first-degree robbery, fifth-degree larceny, credit card theft and illegal use of a credit card. The warrant has not yet been served.