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Palo Alto police have arrested two 17-year-old boys in connection with a strong-arm robbery against another teenage boy on Tuesday afternoon, the department said Wednesday.
A high school-aged boy was sitting on top of a utility box in the 600 block of Georgia Avenue, about a block away from Briones Park, at about 4:20 p.m. when one of the teens allegedly punched him in the head multiple times and stole his cellphone, according to a police press release.
The boy noticed a blue Toyota Corolla parked on the street before the robbery but he hadn’t recognized the driver, he told police. A few minutes later, he heard someone call out his first name. When he looked up, someone punched him several times in the face and head, causing him to fall off the electrical box and drop his cellphone.
The attacker picked up the cellphone and ran to the blue Corolla, which the boy saw was driven up to their location during the assault. The attacker entered the car, which fled east. An adult passerby, who saw the robbery and the teen punch the boy in the head, took photographs of the blue Toyota as it sped away and then called police.
The boy told police he knew the attacker from prior contacts and interactions. He suffered visible bruising and abrasions to his face and head from the attack, but he declined medical attention at the scene, police said.
Officers conducted a follow-up investigation into the identity of the attacker. At about 6:10 p.m., they spotted the blue 2006 Toyota Corolla in City Parking Lot “E,” located downtown at 642 Gilman St. Police found the two teenage boys next to the car and arrested them without incident. Officers located the victim’s stolen cellphone inside the car, police said.
The two teens were booked into Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall for alleged robbery and conspiracy, which are both felonies. The teen who allegedly attacked the boy lives in East Palo Alto; the getaway driver lives in Mountain View, police said. The names and photographs of the two arrestees are not being released because they are underage, the department said.
Anyone with information about the robbery is asked to call the Palo Alto Police Department’s 24-hour dispatch center at 650-329-2413. Anonymous tips can be emailed to paloalto@tipnow.org or sent by text message or voicemail to 650-383-8984.
Does this mean the victim was targeted? Previous interactions makes this sound very possible. It also makes me wonder if the EPA resident was part of the Tinsley program.
Hopefully, they will be tried as adults for GBH (gross bodily harm) and robbery, convicted, given the maximum CONSECUTIVE sentences to lock them up as long as possible. We don’t need or want violent people on our streets. We need them confined to protect the rest of our worthy residents and workers. Time to clean house of our criminals. And I’m not a Conservative fool, I’m a Libertarian Moderate who believes that serious actions against me and my neighbors deserve serious consequences, and vice versa. Like sequestration for a long time from the rest of us. Of course, the military is another option if they’ll take them, which I doubt.