Crime Report: A Lighter-Brandishing Robber and Other Theft Reports

By Cherice Chen

A masked robber used gasoline and a lighter to threaten employees of a check-cashing store on Vanderbilt Avenue early Monday, before making off with $18,000, police said.

The store, a branch of the chain Pay-O-Matic, reported that a man wearing a black ski mask walked in at around 3 a.m. on Nov. 4 and poured a bottle of gasoline into the slot of a teller window, while brandishing a lit lighter in his left hand.

“Open the drawer and give me the money,” the robber said. He put the money in a bag and ran away, police said. Police searching the area found the bottle on the sidewalk nearby. On Wednesday, a teller at the Pay-O-Matic refused to comment on the incident.

Including the Pay-O-Matic robbery, 19 felonies were reported in the 88th Precinct last week. Police made four arrests.

Assaults

-A man slashed another man across his face with a razor at a bodega on Myrtle Avenue between Carlton Avenue and Adelphi Street on Nov. 9, police said. “Could we talk?” the man asked when he approached the 28-year-old victim around midnight. He attacked the victim suddenly, police said, and left a gash that required three stitches.

-A woman was arrested Tuesday after police said she attacked her friend in the hallway of the Walt Whitman Houses on Nov. 5. The 24-year-old victim told the police that Shantay Graham, 24, called her at around 9 p.m., asking her to come into the hallway. Graham then punched her and slammed her into a wall several times, the victim told police. The motive for the attack was unclear, police said.

Graham was charged with assault in the third degree, attempted assault in the third degree, criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree, menacing in the third degree and harassment in the second degree, according to the Kings County District Attorney’s office.

iPhones Robbed and Snatched

-A man who claimed he had a gun stole a 17-year-old girl’s iPhone on Nov. 5 in an elevator at the Walt Whitman Houses. At 6:30 p.m., the victim was in the elevator when a man stepped in. “This is a gun,” he said and demanded that she hand over her iPhone. Police canvassed the area, but could not find the man or the phone.

-A man snatched an iPhone 4S from a 48-year-old woman when she was waiting for a C train at the Lafayette Avenue station on Nov. 5 at about 10:30 a.m. The thief approached the victim and grabbed her phone as the train was pulling into the station, police said. He then fled with another man out of the station, through the South Portland/Fulton Street exit. The woman chased the men but lost track of them when they turned right on Hanson Place. The victim described the thief as a 6-foot-tall man in his early 20s, wearing an olive green hoodie with gray sleeves.

Robberies

-A man was arrested on Nov. 7 after he allegedly attacked and robbed a 25-year-old Long Island University student. The victim told the police that he was beat up in the hallway of the Ingersoll Houses on Nov. 3 at midnight by Freerick Herron and several other attackers who took his wallet. The attacker fled when a passerby intervened, police said. The student told police that that he saw one of the suspects on Nov. 6.

Herron, 34, was arrested and charged with robbery in the second and third degrees, grand larceny in the fourth degree, petit larceny, assault in the third degree, attempted assault in the third degree, menacing in the third degree, harassment in the second degree and criminal possession of stolen property in the fifth degree, according to the Kings County District Attorney’s office.

-A 31-year-old woman told police that three people punched and kicked her on Sept. 21 at about 10 p.m. at the intersection of Classon Avenue and Lafayette Avenue. The attackers took her Louis Vuitton wallet, with one credit card and two debit cards, police said. The woman suffered cuts and the swelling of her face, back and hands. She was sent to the Brooklyn Hospital Center for treatment, police said.

Thefts at the Gym and a Restaurant

-After he finished his workout at the Crunch Gym on Fulton Street at noon on Nov. 2, a 35-year-old man reported that his wallet had been stolen from his locker. He told police the locker was not working properly. The wallet contained a MetroCard, a Metro-North ticket, $15 in cash, a Bank of America credit card and a Chase debit card.

-An employee of Madiba Restaurant on DeKalb Avenue told the police that her Apple laptop was stolen from the bar area sometime around Oct. 10. The 25-year-old woman waited nearly a month before reporting the theft to the police, she said, because she thought whoever took it would return it.

Burglaries

-Two Apple laptops, one Asus laptop and a Nikon camera lens, worth a total of $5,000, were stolen from a Grand Avenue apartment on Nov. 7, police reported. There was no forced entry, and the apartment resident, a 31-year-old man, told the police that the burglars probably entered through the window.

-Burglars stole an iPad and a Hewlett Packard laptop from a 39-year-old woman’s Greene Avenue apartment on Nov. 8, police said. There was no forced entry, police said.

-A 51-year-old man came home on Nov. 7 at 6:00 p.m. and found his apartment cleaned out by burglars, he told police. His furniture and appliances – including his bed, table, TV and microwave – were gone.

-Burglars broke into a South Elliott Place home and took a 37-year-old women’s Asus laptop on Nov. 8. between 13:30 and 19:00 p.m., police said.

Banking Fraud

-Fraudsters siphoned $8,000 from a man’s Chase account on Nov. 5, police said. The victim told police that someone cashed four fraudulent $2,000 checks drawn on his company’s account.

-A 63-year-old man told police that someone used his personal information to open three bank accounts, then used one of the accounts to make purchases totaling $1,585 in Brooklyn. The identity theft happened between Oct. 6 and Oct. 23.

-A 29-year-old man told police that someone withdrew a total of $1,006 from two of his bank accounts at Rivermark Community Credit Union on Nov. 5. The thieves could not have used his card, the man said, because he still had it.

Domestic Violence

-A father was arrested on Nov. 6 after his 13-year-old daughter told a school nurse that he beat her with a belt, police said. The nurse told police that the girl said her father beat her because she had her belly button pierced and posted pictures on Facebook. The daughter had welts and bruising on her face and body, and she was sent to the Brooklyn Hospital Center for treatment.

Christopher Hartley, 34, was charged with assault in the third degree, menacing in the second and third degrees, harassment in the second degree, criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree and endangering the welfare of a child, according to the Kings County District Attorney’s office.

-A woman was arrested on Nov. 5 after police said she choked her 16-year-old son during a fight. The woman told police that her son threw her into a wall while she was choking him.

Quiana Harris, 35, was charged with assault in the third degree, menacing in the third degree and harassment in the second degree, according to the Kings County District Attorney’s office.

-A 22-year-old woman told police on Nov. 5 that her brother choked her during an argument at her Lefferts Place home at around 11 p.m., causing a scratch on her neck. Her brother fled and was not arrested, police said.