Two masked teens who robbed a 14-year-old boy in New Haven hid out in their grandmother’s closet until police tracked them down, police said.
Police said they met with the 14-year-old boy at 9:14 a.m. on Tuesday at Columbus Avenue and West Street and he told officers he’d been waiting for the bus when two masked boys on bicycles approached him. One of the robbers held his hand in his jacket pocket in just such a way that it looked like a gun, police said.
Then, the boys stole the victim’s cell phone and multi-colored Nike Jordan sneakers.
About three hours later, Officer Scott Shumway received a call from the victim’s mother, who said they’d activated the phone’s locator and believed it was at a specific address on Wintergreen Avenue in Hamden.
Officers from New Haven and Hamden headed to the address, where they met with a 79-year-old woman to explain why they were there.
She told officers that her grandson stayed with her sometimes, but more often stayed at a different address in New Haven and wasn’t home, police said.
But, police said, he was there. Officers found him and his brother hiding in a closet in their basement bedroom.
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On the bed, police found two black face masks and the victim’s sneakers, police said. They also found “an unusually large number of cell phones.”
Hamden police said the two boys had a history of robberies and burglaries in their town. Police took them into custody and said one of them confessed and implicated his brother as an accomplice.
Police charged the boys with first-degree robbery and took them to the Juvenile Detention Center in Bridgeport.
One of the teens hit New Haven Officer Robert Dupont with a stolen car downtown on October 23, police said.
