SOUTH JAMAICA — Two “career criminals” were arrested in connection with the shooting of a Maryland mother who was critically wounded defending her daughter and herself from an armed robbery in a hotel parking lot near JKF airport, according to the NYPD.
The two men, John Howard and Donald Warren, were identified by the police after evidence linking back to them was found in two stolen cars, including a Volkswagen Jetta used during the gunpoint robbery of Andrea Koller and her daughter, Meredith Stifter, last Thursday, officials said.
Koller, a 53-year-old English teacher from Towson, MD who was shot in the chest when she fought back, was out of the hospital and recovering from home as of Thursday morning, according to her Facebook page.
Both men were on lifetime parole for robbery when they were arrested, NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said Thursday morning.
They are linked to five robberies in New York City and four in Nassau county, he said, adding that a third suspect was still being sought.
“We will have, at the end of this case, three arrests. Again, these are all really bad individuals on lifetime parole," Boyce said, adding that the suspects hadn't been charged as of Thursday morning.
Last week, Boyce said that investigators believed the suspects were behind several recent tourist robberies that happened in hotel parking lots on Dec. 28, Jan. 3, Jan. 5 and Jan. 9.
Koller was shot in the right side of the chest after she punched a robber who had began attacking her 20-year-old daughter in the Hampton Inn parking lot around 8 p.m on January 21, police said.
The robber and his accomplice had been trailing the pair, who were were planning to spend some mother/daughter time before Stifter, a Lehigh University student, caught a morning flight to South Africa, where she was going to spend a semester abroad, sources said.
Stifter was sitting in the passenger seat as her mother was checking in when the attacker, who was wearing a black ski mask and holding a gun, got into the driver seat and asked her for money, officials said.
The student said she did not have any and the attacker ended up robbing her of her four rings and hitting her in the face with his gun, police said.
As Koller came out of the hotel lobby and returned to the car, the robber asked her for her purse. She refused and tried to defend herself, punching her attacker, officials said.
He shot her, with the bullet exiting through Koller's shoulder, then grabbed her purse and fled with his accomplice in a Volkswagen Jetta, sources said.
