Two separate armed robbers in separate Uptown neighborhoods each appears to have struck a second time, continuing a two-week pattern of holdups into a second weekend, police said.
Both of the latest robberies were reported Friday, Dec. 10, said Sgt. Shaun Ferguson of the NOPD Second District. At the intersection of Zimpel and Adams in the Central Carrollton neighborhood, two women were approached by a man with a gun who took the purse one of the women was carrying and then left in a downtown direction, Ferguson said.
The purse was found several blocks away at the intersection of Audubon and Hampson the next day with all its contents still inside except $61 in cash, Ferguson said.
The same evening, in the 500 block of Octavia Street, a man was getting into his car when he was accosted by another gun-wielding attacker, Ferguson said. The robber took the man’s wallet, car keys and cell phone before leaving, Ferguson said.
Each of the suspects fits the description of a robber in a recent previous case, Ferguson said. The Zimpel robber is said to resemble the suspect in a Dec.6 case on Lowerline, and the Octavia robber matches the description given in a Dec. 8 case from Upperline, Ferguson said.
Though the two Dec. 10 muggings brought Uptown’s total to around a dozen in about a two-week period, they were followed by a lull in robberies in the week following, Ferguson said.
Property crimes have also continued their recent surge, particularly the car burglaries that police often decry as preventable crimes of opportunity. Clusters of car burglaries, as many as 21 in a week, have been reported in the Riverside, Audubon, Carrollton and Broadmoor neighborhoods.
“We just had so many people leaving their car doors open, with a phone, a pistol a nice laptop sitting there,” said NOPD Sgt. Marc Amos of the Second District’s property-crime division.
During last week’s Comstat meeting, Ferguson urged patrol officers to offer robbery victims some counter-intuitive advice: if your credit or debit cards are stolen, do not deactivate them. Ferguson said he has personally spoken to bank officials at Chase and CapitalOne who assured him victims of crime under NOPD investigation will not be charged for the fraudulent use of their card. If the thieves use the cards, however, it is often much easier to catch them.
“Don’t tell the victims to turn their stuff off,” Ferguson said. “Then we have no leads, no way of following up to get these knuckleheads off the streets.”
Contact Robert Morris at rmorris@NolaMessenger.com, or post your comment below.
