YOUNGSTOWN Police credit teamwork for arrests of 2 suspects in robberies, burglary
The men are also suspects in other area crimes, including a rape, that happened during the same week.
YOUNGSTOWN -- City police are praising alert witnesses, a concerned citizen and police teamwork as leading to the recent indictments of two Youngstown men accused of mugging several walkers in Wick Park and burglarizing an East Side couple the next day.
Christopher McBride, 21, of Berwick Avenue, and Jamal Bullock, 30, of Liberty Road, also have been indicted in crimes in Hubbard and are being investigated in Campbell in a burglary that happened the same week.
"They went on a bit of a crime spree," said Youngstown Police Detective Sgt. Carl Davis, who investigated the Youngstown burglary.
The spree began at about 6 a.m. Aug. 22, Davis said, when the men, driving a white Buick, tried to rob several walkers in Wick Park on the city's North Side.
Detective Sgt. Jerome Shuster said they attempted to rob three people and got away with cash and credit cards from one man's wallet.
They first had approached a 62-year-old man, who alerted other walkers, and then they stole a wallet from a second man who was walking with a friend, Shuster said.
They then approached a couple in their 60s walking near Elm and Broadway. The woman was hurt when she was either pushed to the ground or fell, Shuster said.
The men circled the park in the car before throwing back the wallet they had taken from their second victim, police said.
Help from witnesses
All the witnesses were able to give a description of the men, and one person got the car's license plate number. The stolen car was later found parked near a home on the street where McBride lived.
The next day, the two men robbed an elderly couple on Melvina Avenue on the city's East Side, police said. The couple said they arrived home at about 3 p.m. Aug. 23 and saw the men in their yard. The couple's bedroom had been ransacked and two checks, totaling $100, stolen. Also missing were three gold chains and a jewelry bag.
In the Youngstown cases, both men were indicted last week on charges of burglary, four counts of aggravated robbery, two counts of robbery and six counts of theft.
City police said witnesses at the park and the burglary victims were able to give descriptions of the men. A citizen who heard reports of the unrelated arrest of the men helped police home in on their identities.
Police from various jurisdictions have helped in the investigation.
The two men had been arrested Aug. 24 in Hubbard Township in the robbery of an elderly Shadyside Drive woman.
Police said that earlier the same day, the two men raped and robbed a Parkview Avenue woman in the city of Hubbard.
In those cases, they face charges of rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and receiving stolen property.
Police in Campbell also are investigating them in the robbery of $1,200 from an 83-year-old Pin Oaks Place woman, also on Aug. 24.