Early this morning, the Palo Alto Police Department’s Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Team arrested the suspect who had robbed a woman of her purse earlier this month as she sat in her car in the driveway of her home.
On Wednesday, February 7, 2024, at about 8:09 p.m., our 24-hour dispatch center received a call reporting a robbery that had just occurred in the 700 block of De Soto Drive. The victim, a woman in her sixties, reported that the suspect had approached her while she was sitting in her car in the driveway of her home, using her phone. The suspect yelled at the victim to give him her phone and purse. While he did this, the suspect had one hand under his sweatshirt and appeared to be pointing something at her. The victim assumed it was a gun, though one was not seen. The victim handed over her phone and purse. The suspect fled on foot. Officers located the victim’s phone discarded in the area and returned it to the victim after processing it for fingerprints. For more information about the robbery, read the news release we distributed on February 8.
The Identification Unit of the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office was able to find a match on a fingerprint lifted from the victim’s phone. Detectives conducted follow-up investigation and were soon able to identify the suspect as 36-year-old Antonio Jaman Harrison of East Palo Alto. Detectives obtained an arrest warrant charging the suspect with robbery on February 22, and a search warrant for his residence on February 26.
On the morning of Thursday, February 29, 2024, the Palo Alto Police Department’s SWAT Team and Crisis Negotiations Team served the search and arrest warrants at the suspect’s residence in the 1600 block of Bay Road in East Palo Alto with the assistance of the East Palo Alto Police Department, the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, and the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety. Officers took the suspect into custody without incident at about 5:20 a.m. Investigators did not locate any weapons or evidence from the robbery.
Police booked the suspect at the Santa Clara County Main Jail pursuant to the robbery warrant and for a felony probation violation. The suspect is on probation in Santa Clara County for a prior conviction of possessing narcotics in a jail. His booking photograph is available at www.cityofpaloalto.org/PAPDnews.
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.
