Four suspects — including three juveniles — arrested over the holiday weekend in DeKalb County may be linked to the crime wave that has plagued East Atlanta throughout the summer, police say.
DeKalb police spokesman William Wallace confirmed the four male youths — the oldest is 18 — were arrested on July 4 and charged with burglary and theft by receiving.
Officers recovered two stolen cars and discovered stolen guns, electronic equipment and checkbooks inside the apartment of one of the suspects.
Wallace said “evidence connecting them to additional crimes was obtained. At this stage in the investigation we are unable to advise if these suspects are connected to or solely responsible for” some of the high-profile crimes in East Atlanta.
Police have already linked a number of the crimes in East Atlanta — namely the fatal shooting of Patrick Cotrona over the Memorial Day weekend and a pair of armed robberies that occurred earlier that same night.
The suspect in those incidents was described by witnesses as males between the ages of 16 and 18. The perpetrators in many of the other crimes in the area have routinely been males in their mid-to-late-teens, say police
A victim robbed by three suspects — two of whom were alleged to be toting assault weapons — as he walked home from a bar in East Atlanta Village early Sunday morning said he didn’t get a good look at the robbers. But the brazen nature of the crime is in line with many of the others seen in recent months.
“DeKalb made some significant arrests on the Fourth of July,” Atlanta Deputy Police Chief Renee Propes told Channel 2 Action News. “We believe they may be related to some of the crimes here in Zone 6 because we know perpetrators don’t know borders. They don’t care. They go back and forth between zones, between jurisdictions.”
The net may grow even wider, as Decatur police said last week they are working with their counterparts in Atlanta and DeKalb in hopes of catching the suspects responsible for an uptick in burglaries and robberies there — many of them occurring in the daytime. Last week three women were robbed at gunpoint at Oakhurst Park while another was carjacked in downtown Decatur.
Decatur’s police chief was to meet with neighborhood groups Monday and Tuesday, while residents of East Atlanta, Grant Park, Peoplestown, Kirkwood, Chosewood Park and other local communities have scheduled a joint meeting on Wednesday to discuss the ongoing crime wave.
“It’s frustrating,” said Kate Krumm, sister of Cotrona. There have been no arrests in the fatal shooting of the 33-year-old video game engineer. “The crime keeps happening.
“If it didn’t take the murder of an innocent person to make things change, what’s it going to take?” she said.
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