QUEENS — A man who committed two gunpoint robberies in the Forest Hills and Rego Park area, including one in which a woman was pistol-whipped, has been arrested, police officials said.
The robberies, police said, took place on Oct. 8 about an hour apart, said Capt. Thomas Conforti, commanding officer of the 112th Precinct.
The first incident occurred at 9 p.m. when two suspects approached a 32-year-old man in front of his home around 75th Avenue and 113th Street in Forest Hills. They threatened him with a gun, checked his pockets and stole his cellphone, police said. The victim said one of the attackers wore ripped blue jeans.
About an hour later, a 22-year-old woman was attacked near 63rd Road and 98th Place in Rego Park. Two men approached her and hit her in the face with a gun, causing laceration, police said. They stole her cell phone, purse, money and car keys, police said. The woman said one of the attackers wore a blue hooded sweatshirt.
Approximately a week later, Conforti said, around the same area at about the same time, police officers observed three man “acting suspiciously by a car that was parked at a fire hydrant.”
The officers, Conforti said, “thought they were about to rob someone so they initiated a car stop.”
During the car stop the officers “recovered a loaded 9mm semiautomatic firearm from the car," Conforti said, "and one of the occupants was positively identified as being the person that committed those violent robberies a week prior.”
The man's name and other details about the arrest were not immediately available.
