Police are investigating a string of armed robberies around the downtown Decatur area over the past six weeks.
Each of the incidents has involved female victims and two male suspects – one armed and one unarmed – according to police reports.
“In all four incidents … a firearm was displayed, but not used,” Decatur Police Deputy Chief Keith Lee said.
The victims of three of the robberies were alone, and two were robbed in one incident, police said. And the incidents each happened between 8:45 p.m. and 9:15 p.m., police said.
The robbers seemed to go primarily for mobile phones, according to police incident reports.
The first robbery was reported on Feb. 7, near the corner of Ponce De Leon Place and Montgomery street, police said.
Two women were approached by a pair of men, who ordered them to “drop everything,” as one of the men pointed a revolver at the women.
“Where are the phones?” the gunman asked, and the women gave up their purses, police incident reports said.
On Feb. 26, a woman pulling into the Well Fargo ATM drive-through in the 300 block of Ponce De Leon, encountered a pair of men, according to police reports.
As the woman tried to deposit checks into the ATM, she said she saw one of the men approach her car and she cancelled her transaction, police said.
But authorities said the woman was unable to retrieve her ATM card, and she saw the men take the card as she drove away.
An Agnes Scott College student was walking toward the campus along Church Street on March 13 when she was approached from behind by two men.
The armed man pointed a gun at her and demanded her iPhone as the other man looked on, police said.
“She was probably a couple hundred yards from the campus,” Agnes Scott College Police Chief Henry Pope told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The men fled after taking the phone, police said.
The final woman was walking with her grandson from the Kroger on Commerce Drive when two men called to her from behind.
“Excuse me, miss,” the woman told police the men said.
Thinking the men wanted to walk past her, the woman said she stepped aside, according to police reports.
The men approached and demanded her cellphone at gunpoint and grabbed her house keys as well, police said.
Police are continuing to investigate. Detailed descriptions of the suspects were not immediately available.
Campus police said they continue to offer students escorted rides at night to and from Decatur Square and the MARTA station, and Decatur police are conducting activities “designed to prevent future problems and to identify and arrest those involved in this type of behavior.”
Anyone with information about these robberies is asked to call the Decatur police at 404-373-6551.
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