Two elderly women in the District of Columbia narrowly escaped a group of teenagers Sunday night who attempted to rob them at knife point.
The women were walking near American University in Northwest D.C. when they were ambushed by eight teenagers wearing ski masks, FOX 5 reports.
The suspects surrounded the women and ordered them to empty out their pockets, but the women, who are in their 60s, ran away and were able to escape the would-be muggers.
Just 30 minutes after the attempted mugging, a man was held up under similar circumstances a few blocks away.
The man was walking home when, according to police, eight to 10 teenagers wearing ski masks and hoodies encircled him and robbed him at knife point.
Members of the community became concerned that the robberies could be connected to a string of similar incidents in recent weeks.
One neighborhood resident posted on a police listserv following the muggings and said the exact same scenario happened to his neighbor last week.
In November, a woman and her baby were attacked by a large group of teenagers after leaving a dance class in Glover Park. The two were able to escape in the woman’s SUV, but not before one of the teens smashed a giant rock through her window.
About a week later, a gang of teens swarmed on a trendy clothing store in Georgetown and stole thousands of dollars worth of jeans and leather jackets.
Police moved quickly to assuage the fears of residents, saying the similar robberies are completely unrelated.
“At this point, we have no reason to believe that the suspects that were involved in the cases last night were involved in the Georgetown or Glover Park cases,” Melvin Gresham, commander of the Second District, wrote on the police listserv.
Lieutenant Corinne Hughes went further, saying the two Sunday night robberies which happened under similar circumstances, with similar suspects, just two blocks apart, are not related.
“Good morning, there is no evidence that these two robberies are connected in any way. We have increased our patrols in the area, as we do every time around this year, due to the Christmas holiday,” she wrote.
Gregg Pemberton, a spokesman for the DC Police Union, disagrees with the officers.
Pemberton tells The Daily Caller News Foundation in an email that while the two robberies don’t fit the flash-mob robbery mold, it is silly to say they are unrelated.
“I don’t understand why a lieutenant would suggest they aren’t related,” he says.
“They occurred within one hour of each other, two blocks apart, with similarly described suspects and M.O. Add in the fact that this PSA (202) has not had a December robbery since 2012. I would hope they are being investigated as being at least possibly connected.”
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