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Two Women Arrested in SoHo and Forest Hills Robbery Pattern

 NYPD believes eight recent robberies in Manhattan, Queens are connected.
Citywide Robbery Pattern
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QUEENS — Two women were arrested for their role in a Forest Hills gunpoint robbery in June and are believed to be linked to a pattern of eight stickups stretching from Queens to Manhattan, cops said.

Sharhonda Hart, 28, of Staten Island, and Robin Hamilton, 45, were arrested on July 7, cops said.

Hart was only charged with on of the robberies, but Hamilton was also charged with a June 30 incident that is part of the pattern.

According to court documents, Hamilton stole a wallet and a credit card from a woman after breaking into her building on East 3rd Street in the East Village around 4:45 a.m.

Police are still looking for another man and another woman that were also tied to the string of muggings.

The incidents, many of which involved a knife or gun, occurred late at night, and included holding a SoHo woman at gunpoint outside her Grand Street apartment, cops said.

In that case, the victim told the assailants that they "didn't have the balls to shoot" her.

The first robbery occurred on June 29, around midnight, on Slocum Crescent in Forest Hills Gardens. The victims were three women who were coming home after having dinner at an Austin Street restaurant.

Two men approached them, showed a gun and stole jewelry, cash, two iPhones, an iPad and several credit cards, cops said.

According to the criminal complaint, the two women arrested on July 7, drove the getaway car.

Hamilton told police that the two men coerced her into being involved in the robberies.

She also said that the men told her that her “girlfriend got locked up in Suffolk for identity theft,” according to the criminal complaint. The man, she said, “think that my girlfriend gave them up,” and they told her that “I owe them so I go out and do robberies with them.”

The women were caught after one of the victims found out that her stolen credit card had been used on July 29, at 5:40 a.m. at a BP gas station on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn to pay $41 for gas.

Cops checked the surveillance camera at the station which allegedly showed Hart and Hamilton pulling up to the station in a white Ford Fusion and using the card at the gas station.

On July 9, Hart and Hamilton were arraigned for robbery, grand larceny and identity theft.

Police said earlier that they had arrested a third suspect in the robbery, but the case file for the arrest has been since sealed.

Hart had been arrested twice in the past, cops said. In 2006, she was arrested for assault, burglary, robbery and criminal possession of a weapon, and then in 2012, for criminal possession of marijuana.

Hart and Hamilton are due back in court on July 30.