MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Police are looking for three men they say committed three crimes in a matter of minutes on two residential Whitehaven streets.
Around 9 a.m. Friday, a landscaper told police he was working on the 4800 block of Holt Street when he saw three men in a black Dodge Charger breaking into a car outside a home on Puryear Road.
He said the men then left, but soon returned. According to a police report, they pulled up beside him and one pulled a gun, then demanded his wallet, cell phone and even his leaf blower.
“It does kind of frighten me a little bit,” said Martha Roddy who said the area has seen a rise in break-ins and thefts. But she said this is the first time she’s heard about someone being robbed at gunpoint.
“I called my yard man and told him, ‘cause he was coming, he came Saturday, and I told him be careful, you know, ‘cause they leave their equipment on the truck,” Roddy said.
A few minutes after the landscaper was robbed, police said a Comcast technician was robbed on Puryear.
A woman new to the neighborhood told WREG she was getting her internet and home security system installed, when the worker ran to her door to tell her he had been robbed.
“I didn’t know what to think. I’m like, ‘Oh my!’ And right in front of, directly in front of the house. He’s like, ‘yes.’ ‘At gunpoint?’ ‘Yes.’ He said they pushed him down in the ditch,” said the woman who didn’t want to be identified.
Both victims told police they could hear the suspects pull a trigger, but no shots were fired.
“He was very shaken up. He was saying to rob him was one thing, but to try to take his life was another,” the woman said.
Police could only offer vague descriptions of the suspects, but believe all of them to be between 18 and 20 years old.
