By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN — A convicted robber fresh out of prison for committing armed robbery was arrested in New Jersey over the weekend and is being investigated by police as a person of interest in a rash of knifepoint muggings at Stuyvesant Town, police sources said.
The man, who is being looked at for allegedly holding up six women with an ice pick and taking money and other valuables, was collared on Saturday in Cliffside Park, N.J. just over the Hudson River from Manhattan, law enforcement sources said.
He is currently being held in Bergen County jail for violating parole in New York, according to the Bergen County Sheriff's Office.
The man, identified as John Anthony Martinez, 39, of the Bronx, is described as standing 6-foot-4 and weighing 280 pounds, inmate records show, roughly matching the description of the suspect wanted by the NYPD.
A spokeswoman for the state Division of Parole said Martinez was arrested at a residence in Cliffside Park, N.J., for violating his parole by leaving the state.
He was paroled in September after serving eight years of a 10-year sentence for first-degree robbery, in which he held up a victim in Westchester, N.Y., using a knife, the spokeswoman said.
Martinez was taken into custody without incident Saturday evening after an NYPD detective informed the Division of Parole that he was a person of interest in the Stuyvesant Town muggings.
A spokesman for the Cliffside Park Police Department explained that officers assisted in apprehending the man.
In each of the incidents, the suspect gained entry to apartment buildings and followed women into the elevator, threatening them with an ice pick or knife before taking things like money, jewelry and cell phones, police said.
Last Thursday, the suspect robbed a 40-year-old woman and a 32-year-old woman within minutes of each other in Stuyvesant Town, following a Nov. 22 incident in which he mugged a 63-year-old woman of cash inside an elevator in Peter Cooper Village, police said.
The robbery pattern began last month in the Bronx, where three women were targeted and robbed of money and valuables inside their apartment buildings in Co-Op City, police added.
A spokeswoman from the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office said that no bail has been set for Martinez but that he could have a hearing Monday.
He remains in custody in New Jersey pending extradition to New York, a Division of Parole spokeswoman said.
