Police arrested two women after a pair of robberies, one of which involved a stun gun, and a robbery attempt also involving a stun gun earlier this month in Berkeley.
On Sept. 15, police said in court documents that the two women, along with a third accomplice, zapped a woman in the neck with a stun gun after convincing her to let them borrow her phone to make a call. At 2:10 p.m., the victim had been walking in the 2500 block of Parker Street, near Telegraph Avenue, when two young women approached her and asked if they could use her phone to call for a ride.
According to court documents, the woman let them use the phone. But, when she asked for it back, they told her they would not return it. One of the robbers then walked up to her and “zapped her on the front of the neck with a stun gun.” They fled and the victim chased them to a waiting Yellow Volkswagen Beetle convertible. Police said the victim then fought with the person who took her phone, and the driver took off with the victim “hanging out of the window.” When the victim could no longer hold on, she fell to the roadway, wrote police, but she was able to grab the stun gun and pull off the watch from the robber’s wrist.
Earlier that day, shortly after 10 a.m., a woman at Ellsworth and Russell streets, near Telegraph and Ashby Avenue, reported that she had been running when three black females she did not know approached her from behind. “She felt one of them touching the back of her neck,” police wrote. Another one tried to grab the victim’s cell phone from her hand; police said she resisted, and “one of the women slapped her in the face.” She ran away and the women fled the area.
Then, just before 2 p.m., a woman and her friend were walking near Benvenue Avenue and Woolsey Street near College Avenue. They saw three black females talking at the northwest corner of the intersection, police wrote. After the walkers passed, one of the women “ran up to [the victim], bumped into her, and stole her iPhone 4 mobile phone from her rear shorts pocket.”
On Sept. 22, a Berkeley Police officer spotted a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, which had been described in a “wanted” flyer, at Alcatraz Avenue and Adeline Street in South Berkeley. The officer stopped the car and spoke with the driver, 20-year-old Margaretta Williams, and passenger Rushonda Lincoln, 18, of Oakland.
Police said Lincoln “took responsibility for her actions” in the Ellsworth and Parker robberies, and said Williams had used the stun gun in the Parker Street incident. According to court documents, the women had tried to use the stun gun in the Ellsworth incident, but it had malfunctioned.
Both women were charged with four felonies: attempted second degree robbery, two counts of second degree robbery, and assault with a stun gun or Taser. No information was available as of press time regarding the third accomplice, but she did not appear to be in the custody of the Alameda County sheriff’s department.
Williams and Lincoln are scheduled for a pre-trial hearing Monday, Sept. 30, at the Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse in downtown Oakland. They remain in custody at Santa Rita Jail, Williams with a bail of $155,000 and Lincoln with a bail of $105,000.
Related:
Oakland parolee charged after 2 robberies in Berkeley (09.24.13)
Berkeley pedestrian robberies up 35%, burglaries up too (09.17.13)
Op-Ed: We need to be able to walk our streets and not be afraid (08.21.13)
2 arrested after UC Berkeley campus robbery, 2 at-large (07.18.13)
Police seek 3 after armed robbery on Warring Street (06.25.13)
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