Detectives working on an armed robbery case from April 2022 arrested one of the two suspects yesterday after conducting extensive follow-up investigation. The second suspect remains at large.
On Friday, April 15, 2022, at about 6:31 p.m., our 24-hour dispatch center received a call reporting an armed robbery that had occurred about 15 minutes earlier in the 900 block of Bryant Street. The victim reported that the suspects had fled in a black two-door vehicle.
The investigation revealed that the victim, a man in his thirties, had just parked in the driveway of his home and had opened the rear door of his vehicle to get his young relative out of the backseat. The suspect vehicle then pulled up nearby, and a passenger got out and approached him. That suspect pointed a pistol at the victim and demanded his property. The victim complied and handed over his wristwatch, noting that the driver of the suspect vehicle had remained in the car but was also pointing a handgun at him. The suspects then drove away. The child remained in the vehicle during the crime and was not addressed by the suspects. For more information about the robbery, see the news release we distributed about it the night of the crime.
Detectives have been conducting extensive follow-up investigation into the case and were able to identify the driver of the suspect vehicle as 25-year-old Tommy Walter Miller of South San Francisco. Detectives were also able to connect Miller to four auto burglaries that had occurred in Palo Alto on March 30, April 13 (two cases), and April 15, 2022. In those incidents, parked and unoccupied vehicles in downtown Palo Alto had their windows smashed with property stolen from inside. The property totaled more than $11,000 in value and included multiple laptop computers.
Police submitted the case to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office for review, and on June 5, detectives obtained an arrest warrant from the Santa Clara County Superior Court for one count of robbery and four counts of auto burglary. All five crimes are felonies.
On Wednesday, June 7, 2023, at about 9:28 a.m., detectives arrested Miller without incident at the Palo Alto Courthouse at 270 Grant Avenue. Police booked Miller into the Santa Clara County Main Jail pursuant to the arrest warrant.
Detectives are continuing to actively investigate the robbery in an effort to identify and arrest the second suspect.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call our 24-hour dispatch center at (650) 329-2413. Anonymous tips can be e-mailed to [email protected] or sent via text message or voice mail to (650) 383-8984.
