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Home Invasion Robbery, Three Arrested

It started with a sound at a side window around 9AM in the 8100 block of Wakefield Avenue in Panorama City.  But no one was there when a young woman, home alone with her baby, awoke to check.  She got a little scared, then saw a man pacing in the front yard.  She asked through a window what the man wanted and he said he was looking for someone called Omar.

Then, all of a sudden, a noise from a back window of the house.  A dresser is pushed over and two masked men are standing in the bedroom demanding money.  One man, armed with a gun, tells her he knows she has money and he wants it.  She pleads with him not to hurt her because she has the baby, but the man is insistent and threatens the woman.

Meanwhile, the police are on their way because the victim called 9-1-1 after the suspicious man at the front door. 

The victim shows the robbers where some money is hidden from a recent court settlement.  Then there’s a knock at the door, and the lead robber goes to answer it.

“I guess he thought it was his lookout in the front yard,” said Lt. Paul Vernon, commanding officer of the Mission Detective Division.  “The masked robber got a surprise when it was the uniformed LAPD officer who had answered the 9-1-1 call.”

The patrol officers had already detained the man in the front yard, thinking he was the full reason for the call to police.  The officer knocked on the door to speak to the caller, and the officer was surprised when a masked man opened the door.

The robber slammed the door on the officer and ran.  “We’re lucky there wasn’t a shooting right there, given this man was armed,” Lt. Vernon explained.  “The robber and his partner jumped out a back window, and the chase was on.”

The patrol officer put out a back up, and responding officers and the police helicopter tracked the two robbers through yards all the way to the CVS store at Van Nuys Boulevard and Rosce Boulevard, where both suspects gave up.

Detectives later found the would-be loot, thousands of dollars in cash, still in the victim’s home, abandoned in the robbers’ haste to get away.  A search by a canine and his partner located the gun inside the victim’s closet, apparently tossed there to keep from being caught with a gun.

Neither the victim nor her baby was injured.  The lead robber appeared to be a hardened gang member with tattoos.  His two accomplices were young, with not too much in the way of criminal histories.  “Given what they were up to, young or not, they knew this was a serious crime and wrong,” Lt. Vernon added.  “We’ll see how much they give up when detectives talk to them.  It’s clear there was some kind of inside information at work here.  This was no random robbery.”

All three suspects were booked for armed robbery.

Picture is of .22 cal pistol found by K9.