GILROY
– A pair of robbers dressed as construction workers and armed
with handguns pulled off another home invasion Tuesday, the third
in the county in three weeks.
GILROY – A pair of robbers dressed as construction workers and armed with handguns pulled off another home invasion Tuesday, the third in the county in three weeks.
Detectives from the San Jose police and county sheriff’s department are comparing notes, and sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Dean Baker believes the robbery in San Jose is linked to two similar crimes outside Morgan Hill and Gilroy on Nov. 14 and 25.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt at all,” said Baker, who is leading the sheriff’s investigation. “It’s the same crew.”
As in the recent robberies in Morgan Hill and Gilroy, Tuesday’s perpetrators dressed as construction workers, struck around midday, wielded handguns, and tied up their victims before robbing them.
The incidents could also be connected to three other home invasion robberies in San Jose in the past year, beginning Dec. 31, 2002.
Some, however, could be copycat crimes, San Jose police Detective Ed Perea said.
At about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, two men approached the door of a house on the 1500 block of Orlando Drive in eastern San Jose, according to police. They were met on the porch by the 54-year-old owner and lone occupant of the house. They told him in Spanish they were there to fix a heater. They were dressed in orange coveralls with yellow stripes and orange vests, similar to the construction-type garb reportedly worn by the robbers of the homes on the outskirts of Gilroy and Morgan Hill.
The San Jose robbers then reportedly drew handguns and said, “Police!” in Spanish. They did not injure the victim. But they tied him up and stole an undisclosed amount of money as well as the victim’s yellow 2001 GMC pickup (California license plate No. 7E11050) and other items San Jose police chose not to reveal, for fear of endangering their investigation. Police refused to say whether the stolen amount of money was large or small.
Despite the suspects’ alleged claim that they were police officers, they never displayed badges or other evidence of this, according to San Jose police.
The victim originally told police one of the robbers was white and the other was black, but he changed this description in a subsequent interview, saying both men were Hispanic. Based on his description, a San Jose police artist made a sketch of one suspect, but there was insufficient detail to sketch the other man.
It’s hard to tell whether this sketch matches one of two drawings a Sheriff’s Department artist made based on descriptions of suspects in the Morgan Hill robbery.
There was a very clear match, however, between the Sheriff’s artist’s suspect sketches from the Gilroy and Morgan Hill robberies, according to Baker. These suspects are described as Hispanic, in their 20s, speaking both Spanish and English.
“Our two (cases), in particular, I’m convinced are linked,” Baker said of the Morgan Hill and Gilroy robberies.
“I have reason to believe (the three older San Jose home invasions) were related. This last one, however, I’m not so sure about,” Perea said of his four cases. “There’s some discrepancy in the description of the suspects and the manner in which they were dressed.”
“There are some (differences) but a lot of similarities,” Baker said of the six cases. “It looks like they probably are (connected), or at least they’re copycats.”
Baker said police “haven’t established enough links” among the victims to determine a specific type of household being targeted. Therefore, he said, “everybody” should be alert.
The only similarity among victims thus far seems to be that the victim houses were in “fairly nice residential areas,” Baker said.
Robbers stole about $52,000 in cash and two handguns on Nov. 14 from the Morgan Hill victim family, which owns several restaurants around the county, but Baker said not all the victims had such large stashes of cash on the property.
“They’re targeting homes midday, broad daylight, usually when there are residents home,” Baker said.
The robbers appear to have inside information about when their victims will be home, Baker said. The Nov. 25 Gilroy incident was the only one where the homeowners weren’t present. They were scheduled to be home but were late arriving, Baker said, and the robbers instead tied up relatives visiting from out of town, stealing one’s wallet and car. The black 1994 Volkswagen Golf still has not been found; it had 18-inch chrome wheel rims and California license plate No. 2SLL039.
Baker also noted that both South County robberies were done in areas without easy escape routes, indicating to him that the robbers’ victims weren’t choosing their victims randomly.
“I would say they had some knowledge of the victims,” Baker said. “Where that knowledge came from, we won’t know until we get them.”
While most victims have not been hurt, the robbers struck one person in the face in the Morgan Hill incident.
Also in that robbery, a third suspect drove a getaway vehicle, a white Chevrolet pickup truck.
