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Thieves connected to nine midday robberies in Hampden

Posted at 4:34 PM, Aug 13, 2018
and last updated 2018-08-13 19:32:48-04

Baltimore Police says at least two people went around robbing people in the Hampden neighborhood over the weekend.

Nine cases were reported on Saturday.

Police are calling them a ‘cell’ of bad guys, taking advantage of seemingly every and any opportunity to stick up unsuspecting people in north Baltimore.

“One of the tell-tale signs to many of these patterns when we make arrests and we get to a point where we’re charging them or not is that the pattern stops. So we’ve been monitoring and we haven’t seen any other robberies take place since,” Chief T.J. Smith, head of media relations within the police department, said.

Smith said a group of men robbed at least nine people in a three-mile radius on Saturday, six of them in the middle of the afternoon in about an hour and a half.

The cases shook up David Simmons who lives near where the first robbery happened, and where other thefts have hit his own backyard.

“The stuff this weekend did, that one didn’t. This weekend was, sort of, broad daylight so that’s a little concerning,” Simmons said.

The robberies started in the 3200 block of Keswick Road around 2:15 a.m.

Outside of a motive for a quick grab, police say they aren’t sure why Hampden and Remington were the thieves target, but quick work among investigators and eyewitnesses were able to help get a few men that could be involved off the street.

“So, we were able to get some good valuable information from victims, but also couple that with good police work where they were able to identify that vehicle – they were in the area – get it pulled over, and get the persons who were in the vehicle identified,” Smith said.

Police say two men have been arrested so far, after officers found a handgun in the car they were in that fit witnesses’ description.

They have yet to be charged.

Police are still looking for others who may have been involved.