Three teenage boys and two adults from Oakland attacked a woman walking in South Berkeley on Saturday night during a robbery that was interrupted by a police officer who happened to be nearby, authorities report.
The woman was walking with her bike on Fairview Street near Sacramento Street just before 7:40 p.m. when the group “knocked her to the ground and started kicking and punching her,” the Berkeley Police Department said in response to a Berkeleyside inquiry.
“During the attack, the suspects took the woman’s bicycle and demanded her cellphone,” said Officer Byron White, BPD spokesman.
An officer who was parked nearby “heard the commotion” and confronted the group, White said. The robbers ran off. One fled east on Fairview while two others went south on Sacramento.
A short time later, said White, officers spotted the group in a vehicle in the 3100 block of Harper Street (near Prince Street), about six blocks away, and stopped it.
White said five people — a 22-year-old man, a 21-year-old woman and three teenage boys, one who was 13 and two who were 14 — were arrested on suspicion of robbery and conspiracy.
The adults are no longer in custody and do not appear to have been charged, according to online records from Alameda County Superior Court. No information was available about the juveniles due to privacy laws that protect minors.
Berkeleyside has not released the names of the adults because charges do not appear to have been filed.
In recent years, Berkeley has consistently averaged about a robbery a day.
From Jan. 3-6, there were reports of at least five robberies in Berkeley including the one on Fairview, according to CrimeMapping, an online repository for basic police data. Three took place in South Berkeley, while one happened on Telegraph and another on University Avenue.
