Local Crime Spree Ends With Arrests At Washington Market Square

Category: Crime Reports
Published on Saturday, 18 June 2011 18:04
Written by Police Website

Three people were arrested May 11 in connection with a series of armed robberies in the Koreatown, Harvard Heights and West Adams areas. The suspects are also linked to the slaying of an MTV music coordinator.

Officers swarmed the Washington Market Square shopping plaza on Washington Boulevard and Tenth Avenue and took two people into custody at gunpoint. They also impounded a light blue sedan that appeared to match the general description of a vehicle used in the crimes. By late afternoon, one of the suspects who had been detained was arrested, and information he provided led them to a third suspect, police said.

 

Arrested were: Richard Edward Anderson, a 33 year-old Male, Black of Reseda who was booked for 211 PC-Robbery, Destiny Young, a 29 year-old female white, from Los Angeles who was booked for 2 counts of 187 PC, Murder, and Jabaar Vincent Thomas, a 26 year-old, male Black of Los Angeles who was booked for multiple counts of robbery.

Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Matt Blake said police believed the same suspects may have been involved in as many as nine robberies that occurred in the area beginning April 29. Detectives were able to develop information linking two of the suspects to the murder of Marcello Aragon and Gabriel Ben Mier.

The robberies included at least one instance in which a victim fought back, prompting one of the suspects to open fire, Blake said. The victim was not injured. Blake also noted that a person was killed by a shotgun blast in the area on April 30 during an apparent attempted robbery.

“When he [the victim] didn’t give up his property, he [the suspect] turned the shotgun on him, and he is deceased,’’ Blake said.

Blake said the robbery suspects also had not been linked to that killing, although he conceded there were similarities in the crimes and that “shotguns are kind of a rare weapon to be used in a street crime.’’

The most recent robberies included one that occurred at about 6:15 p.m. Tuesday near Eighth Street and Normandie Avenue, Los Angeles police Detective John Skaggs of the Olympic Station said.

In a second robbery, the suspects approached a pedestrian on the street about 9:40 p.m. Tuesday near Sycamore Avenue and Westhaven Street, Skaggs said.

In a third robbery, a pedestrian was robbed about 10:15 p.m. Tuesday in the 1800 block of South Oxford Avenue, near Washington Boulevard, Skaggs said.

Victims of all three robberies had the same description of the suspects, Skaggs said.

From the Wilshire Division Website