New York City police are searching for a pair of suspects who they say robbed a mother and her toddler at gunpoint in the Bronx Wednesday morning.
Police said the robbery occurred in the lobby of an apartment building near West Kingsbridge Road and Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx at about 8:20 a.m., WNBC reported. Maxie Feliz, 35, told WABC that she was taking her three-year-old son to preschool when the suspects stopped them in the lobby.
Police said the suspects brandished a gun and aimed it at Feliz’s torso and her son’s head, demanding she fork over her property, according to WNBC.
“Why point a gun at a child, why? What did they accomplish doing that?” Feliz said while speaking with WABC.
The suspects snatched her car keys and wallet, which was holding her iPhone and $1,500 cash, and left the scene in her Range Rover, according to WNBC. Surveillance video released by the New York Police Department’s Crime Stoppers shows the suspects ditching Feliz’s vehicle at another location and carrying a car seat, WABC reported.
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“What makes the robbery even more unsettling is police believe Feliz was targeted,” WABC noted. “According to building residents, the men were seen waiting in the lobby for an hour and 40 minutes — and even helped a blind tenant take out her garbage.”
Though police believe Feliz was targeted, she said she does not understand why – unless they sought to steal her Range Rover.
“Never in my life have I seen them before, I don’t have a busy social life, I don’t run the streets, I came to this country to work,” she told WABC.
The incident comes as robberies and motor vehicle thefts have spiked in New York City under the watch of Democratic Mayor Eric Adams. Since Adams assumed office on January 1, through March 6, robberies are up 44.8 percent, and grand larceny auto is up 94.1 percent compared to the same period in 2021, the NYPD’s crime statistics show.
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