A 17-year-old linked to a series of attacks on women and carjackings may have had as many as two partners, according to police.
Steve Spigner was indicted Friday in Fulton County for allegedly attacking a woman in the parking lot of Phipps Plaza Mall earlier this month. Then a few hours later he appeared before a DeKalb County magistrate on charges of attacking two others and taking their cars in July.
The magistrate declined to set bond because Spigner has a hearing in DeKalb Superior Court later this month on charges of stealing a car from a fourth woman.
“They would stalk their victims while walking to their cars and punch them in the face,” investigator Tyrone Dennis with the Atlanta Police Department’s gang unit said of Spigner and the others who might have been involved.
Dennis said there was yet another case in DeKalb County, but the woman attacked at Stone Crest Mall on July 14 had not been able to identify Spigner.
Dennis said more arrests are expected but he declined to discuss details or name other suspects.
The charges that brought Spigner to court on Friday were robbery by force and misdemeanor battery involving two women.
On July 5, a woman had just stepped out of of her 2011 Mercedes on a lower level parking lot near the Target at the Edgewood Shopping District when she was punched in the head and knocked to the ground. Her attacker took her car.
Two days later, on East Lake Boulevard in a section of Atlanta that is in DeKalb County, Natissia Adderley was getting things out of the trunk of her Mercedes when she was punched in the face and knocked to the ground. Her attacker drove off in her car as well.
Marquita Cook had just stepped out of her Ford Escape in the parking lot of the Long John Silver Restaurant in East Atlanta when Spigner allegedly got into her car and tried to drive off. Cook jumped on the hood of her car and she held on as he pulled on to Moreland Avenue and then into a bank parking. She let go only after he threatened to shoot her, according to the police report
Police said it was the theft of Cook’s car on July 12 that allowed them to link the three cases as well as two that came after.
The incident at Stonecrest Mall was on July 14. That woman also was punched before her car was taken, police said.
Michelle Wing’s BMW was taken after she was punched as she was walking toward her car parked outside a restaurant at Phipps Plaza on Aug. 4. Spigner is charged with aggravated battery because the bone around Wing’s eye was broken.
Spigner’s parents have also faced criminal charges and were sentenced to prison five years ago for their roles in what federal prosecutors called a multi-state drug trafficking organization based in Snellville.
The father, also named Steven Spigner, was 40 at the time he was sentenced in January 2009, to 30 years in prison, followed by 5 years of supervised release. His wife, Yojuana Spigner, was sentenced to 3 years. She was 31 at the time she was sentenced.
According to former U.S. Attorney David E. Nahmias and information presented in federal court, Steven Spigner distributed multi-kilo quantities of cocaine in the South Carolina, Washington and Baltimore areas.
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