Three armed robberies on the same stretch of South Harvard Avenue in Roseland have Chicago police warning residents about a pattern tied to social media meetups gone wrong. The incidents, spanning late summer into this week, each followed the same setup: a victim agreed to meet someone through an app, only to be confronted at gunpoint.
Chicago police issued a community alert about the string of robberies on the 9200 block of South Harvard Avenue, according to WGN-TV. The station reports robberies occurred on the block at 5:30 a.m. on September 12, at 2:30 p.m. on October 18, and at 7:30 p.m. this past Tuesday, October 27. In each case, police said, the robbery victims had agreed to meet the offender via a social media app before he demanded their belongings at gunpoint and fled in an unknown direction once they complied.
Police described the suspect as a skinny Black male with a light complexion, standing between 5 feet 8 inches and 6 feet 2 inches tall, wearing all-black clothing and a mask, per the same account relayed by WGN-TV. Anyone with information is asked to call Area Two detectives at 312-747-8273 or submit an anonymous tip at CPDTIP.com using reference number P26-2-018, the station reports.
A Wider Pattern Across Roseland and Washington Heights
The Harvard Avenue cluster comes as the Chicago Police Department had already issued a community alert on October 6 covering recent armed robberies across the Roseland and Washington Heights neighborhoods. Other reported Roseland-area street robberies have also surfaced this month: Patch reported that two separate incidents on October 16 and October 19 involved a man armed with a gun who approached victims, demanded their phones, and forced them to change their passwords before fleeing on foot, according to a Patch report citing a separate CPD alert…