Buried in the police report I posted this morning — but worthy of more attention — is this:
At 10:58 p.m. on Friday, a robber armed with a semi-automatic gun and wearing a ski mask approached a couple in their driveway in the 3800 block of Centenary Drive and stole a $75 purse, a $60 wallet, $60 in cash, $50 worth of cosmetics, five credit cards, and at least one driver’s license. A vehicle could be heard speeding away.
I’ve left a message at the only listed number I could find for the victims. I’ll update this post if they call me back, but, because this is Christmas Eve, I’m not holding my breath.
Meanwhile, this seems like as good a time as any to review the other armed robberies we had in the Park Cities this year.
The excitement started back in January, when Highland Park Department of Public Safety Sgt. Lance Koppa issued a news release in the middle of the night.
In August, we had two incidents of knifepoint robberies in as many weeks. The first one was memorable because the victims weren’t so easy to deal with. The second one was hard to forget because of the creepy way the thug told his victim to stay quiet.
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Finally, in October, we had the case of the man who ran inside and slammed the door on a gunman.
Am I forgetting any similar incidents?
Update at 3:23: Much to my surprise, one of the victims in the most recent robbery called me back this afternoon. He said he and his wife had just arrived home from an evening out on Friday when the ski-masked robber grabbed his wife around the neck and put a gun to her head.
“At first, I thought it was a joke,” the husband told me, echoing the sentiments of the victims in the first August incident linked above. The University Park couple’s older son, who often wears a knit cap, is in town for Christmas, and the husband thought it might have been a prank. “That didn’t last very long.”
The husband said the robber was very calm and businesslike, as if he’s done this sort of thing before. He told the couple, “You guys do what I say, and nobody’ll get shot,” before demanding the wife’s purse and the husband’s wallet.
The wife asked if she could keep her phone; much to the husband’s surprise, the robber agreed. He removed it from the purse and threw it into some bushes, where it was easy enough to find after he was gone. Before he left, he ordered the couple to lie facedown on their driveway.
The husband said he’d never had a gun pointed at him before Friday.
“I should have been scared, but I was just pissed off,” he said. “How dare you do this in my driveway?”
But the incident is not going to keep the couple from having a merry Christmas, the husband said, because the robber made off with little more than his wife’s lipstick.
“I hope it’s his shade,” he said with a laugh.
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