Three people were robbed on a quiet stretch of Lynhuber Drive in Pines Village Saturday afternoon after being summoned to meet strangers at an unknown location; the suspects instead pulled a gun, forced them to the ground, and emptied their pockets before vanishing. The New Orleans Police Department confirmed the robbery happened around 4:25 p.m. in the 4800 block of the street, and the investigation remains active with no arrests announced.
According to WDSU, police said the three victims had been called to an unknown location to meet with the suspects. Once there, the suspects produced a gun and ordered the victims to lie on the ground, and the victims complied with those demands. The suspects then took belongings from the victims’ pockets before fleeing the scene, per the same report.
The set-up nature of the encounter underscores a risk familiar to anyone arranging a meet-up with strangers, whether for an online sale or otherwise. NOPD has tried to get ahead of exactly this kind of crime by establishing 24/7 Safe Exchange Zones in the parking lots of six district stations, including the 7th District, giving residents a well-lit, monitored place to complete transactions instead of a private street, according to Sell My Car in New Orleans.
Where the Robbery Happened
The robbery unfolded in Pines Village, a subdistrict of the Ninth Ward within New Orleans East that developer Sigmund Pines carved out of drained coastal marshland in the 1950s to build single-family subdivisions, as Hoodline has previously reported. The neighborhood falls under NOPD’s 7th District, the department’s largest geographic command at roughly 133 square miles, headquartered at 10101 Dwyer Road, per the City of New Orleans…