Police said Tuesday that robbers on bicycles robbed at least seven people on Manhattan sidewalks and parks, snatching cell phones from the hands of unsuspecting pedestrians.
Police said the threat first targeted a 17-year-old boy who was walking just outside Union Square Park on East 17th Street near Park Avenue South around 3:30 p.m. on Valentine’s Day. Ta.
Police said the man snatched the boy’s cellphone before riding off on his bicycle.
At around 6:40 p.m. on the same day, a drunken party ensued at 1st Avenue and 90th Street on the Upper East Side, where a cyclist pried a cell phone from a 53-year-old woman’s hand.
Police said the serial thief approached a 30-year-old woman in Washington Square Park around 3 p.m. on February 16 and ripped her cell phone away.
He took two days off and targeted four more victims in as many areas on February 19, authorities said.
According to police, around 6:30 p.m., a 35-year-old woman was walking down West 27th Street, just outside Chelsea Park, toward 10th Avenue when a woman on a bicycle with sticky fingers spotted her cell phone. He said he snatched her phone.
About 30 minutes later, police said they received a call from a 29-year-old man who was walking down University Place toward East 10th Street, a few blocks from New York University.
Police said the next victim was a 28-year-old woman walking in the area of Bowery and East 4th Street around 8:30 p.m.
That’s when he again grabbed the victim’s cell phone directly from her hand, police said.
Authorities said the man pedaled back in the direction he had come and targeted the final victim, a 35-year-old woman who was walking south on Avenue of the Americas toward West 25th Street around 8:40 p.m. .
Police said the man fled northbound on Avenue of the Americas on his motorcycle.
Police released an image of the suspect Tuesday and said he appears to be between 20 and 30 years old, approximately 5 feet 8 pounds and weighing about 150 pounds.
Anyone with information about the series of thefts is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or, for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782) .
The public can also submit tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website. https://crimestoppers.nypdonline.org/or with X @NYPDTips.
In a similar series of recent robberies, brazen moped thieves linked to the brutal Venezuelan gang Torren de Aragua snatched cellphones from victims’ hands before speeding away, officials said. He previously told the Post.
And during a Sunday night spree, several robbers on Citi Bikes terrorized Central Park, targeting four people in just over an hour, telling one terrified victim: “I don’t take things away from people.” “I make a living by robbing people,” he boasted, according to police and sources.
