YOUNGSTOWN Purse-snatching suspect nabbed

Three armed robberies were reported on the South Side within three hours Friday.
YOUNGSTOWN -- A 22-year-old South Side man faces charges of aggravated robbery, assault, aggravated menacing and resisting arrest after a purse-snatching on South Avenue, city police reports show.
The Erie Street man is accused of snatching the purse from a woman in front of the Dairy Mart at 3518 South Ave. near the Hilton Avenue intersection around 8:30 p.m. Friday.
The man ran south, with a male friend of the woman's chasing him. The friend told police he had caught up to the man and tried to retrieve the purse before he was punched and the man threatened to shoot him and gestured under his coat.
Police saw the man on East Judson Avenue and began chasing him before tackling him in a yard in the 300 block. A billfold containing documents with the woman's name was found in the man's coat pocket.
The woman later identified him as the man who stole her purse, police reports show. She said he nearly pulled her to the ground when he yanked on her purse and she suffered a swollen hand.
The robbery was one of three that occurred on the South Side within three hours on Friday.
Armed robberies: Around 6:15 p.m., a man wearing a skull cap down to his nose pulled a silver revolver at Angelo's Pizza at 3215 South Ave., ordered others in the business to "drop everything" and stole an unspecified amount of money from an open cash drawer, city police reports show. He then robbed a customer of his wallet, according to the reports.
Around 7:35 p.m., a man brandishing a silver revolver at Dollar General at 3613 Market St. approached a clerk from behind and demanded money from an open cash drawer, according to city police reports. He stole about $90 and left with another man, the reports said.
Descriptions given of the robbers of the two establishments are similar, a police report shows.
Car stolen: Also on Friday, a 31-year-old Salem woman reported to city police that she had been robbed of her car at knifepoint.
She told police she was driving her Ford Probe on Glenwood Avenue at Indianola Avenue around 9 p.m. Thursday when two men jumped into the car, pulled a switchblade and ordered her out, reports show. She said she got out and called her boyfriend for a ride home.
She told police she returned to Youngstown to look for her car and saw it stopped in traffic on Falls Avenue, driven by a woman she knows. When she approached, a man came out, acted as if he had a gun and told her to leave. She then went to the city police station and filed a report around 2:40 a.m. Friday.