Police released dramatic video Thursday, and announced a new arrest, in a South Berkeley robbery investigation from earlier this month.
A 21-year-old woman waiting for the bus Aug. 13 was robbed by a teenager who pulled up in a getaway vehicle, which then sped off, police said. The incident took place just after 5:10 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Ashby Avenue.
The video released by police Thursday shows a gold-colored sedan pull up next to the woman as she looks down at her cellphone. The passenger gets out and grabs the phone from her hands, then returns quickly to his seat “with the victim still holding on. The suspects then drove away, briefly dragging the woman in the road and nearly running her over,” according to a prepared statement from BPD.
The woman was not hurt, police said.
Authorities already have charged 18-year-old Daevon Hudson of Antioch with second-degree robbery in the case. According to court papers, he told police the car was his and admitted he drove it during the robbery. He remains in custody with a bail of $50,000 and is set for a pretrial hearing Sept. 4, according to records online.
Thursday, Berkeley police detectives arrested the person they say grabbed the woman’s phone. Authorities identified him as a 17-year-old from San Leandro. Further information was not available due to privacy laws that protect minors. (His face, as well as the victim’s, were blurred out in the video for their privacy, police said.)
BPD said they released the video Thursday to remind the public to be alert because so many pedestrian robberies involve victims whose devices are easily accessible.
“In a past review of street robberies, we found that over half of the victims were holding an electronic device in their hand or were walking alone,” BPD said in a statement Thursday. “The Berkeley Police Department encourages members of the community to always remain alert and aware of your surroundings when handling/viewing their personal electronic devices.”
There have been more than 165 robberies in Berkeley over the past six months, according to CrimeMapping.com, a repository for local police data. The city tends to average about one robbery a day each year.
