Features

Police are investigating whether one man was responsible for two eerily similar crimes that were reported just minutes apart early Thursday morning. In both cases, the suspect asked the victim for the time before issuing a threat and stealing some of their belongings. 

The first reported incident occurred at 6:08 a.m. on the 2100 block of Stuart Street. The victim was parking his car and noticed the suspect pull into the driveway next door to his home in a white mid-size car. The suspect walked up to the victim, who was getting out of his car, and asked him for the time. The victim had a bag with a laptop computer, food and a wallet in it. The suspect grabbed the bag while the victim was asking him not to take it. The suspect reached into the bag, pulled out the wallet and the computer and ran back to his car and drove away, said Capt. Bobby Miller of the Berkeley Police Department. 

In a similar robbery reported at 6:09 a.m. in the 2400 block of Atherton Street, the victim was preparing to get into her car when she noticed a driver pull up in a white four-door Infiniti and park slightly north of her car. He approached the victim and asked her for the time. She told him and turned her attention away and then found the suspect had moved closer to her and acted as if he didn’t hear her, said Miller. 

She told the man the time again but realized the suspect was not really interested knowing the time. He said “Give me your purse or I’ll knock you out,” according to the police report. The victim handed over her purse and he took her car keys, returned to his car and as he was leaving he threw the keys onto the street where she retrieved them. 

Miller said the descriptions of the two suspects were similar and “it is very possible the two incidents are connected.” He said a few minutes delay in the reporting of the first robbery would allow for the crimes, just a few blocks apart, to be linked.