Three West Seattle Crime Watch notes tonight:
SERIAL-ROBBERY CHARGES: On Friday night, we reported that police announced an arrest in the December 4th robbery of the 35th/Barton 7-11. Today, 22-year-old Ricardo F. Valencia-Alvarez was charged in that holdup and 10 others, and an alleged accomplice, 21-year-old Cesar Sandoval, was charged too; another alleged accomplice, Daniel A. Recinos, is already in jail and charged with multiple robberies. In the 95-page charging document filed by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, investigators detail a string of robberies, mostly at gas stations, in October, November, and December, in communities including Bellevue, Mercer Island, Kent, Renton, Redmond, and Maple Valley, as well as West Seattle, White Center, and Burien. The night we reported the 35th/Barton holdup, we noted that a Burien gas station had been held up a short time later by robbers who matched the description; that robbery yielded some key evidence – the clerk fired 11 shots at the robbers as they fled, and detectives say Valencia-Alvarez posted photos of the shot-up white BMW on social media, where he added, “We had just robbed the gas station too.”
The BMW had been carjacked in Federal Way days earlier and was found a day after the West Seattle/Burien robberies, on I-90 in Kittitas County, where the suspects are accused of abandoning it and carjacking another driver to get their next getaway car. About a week earlier, on November 29th, prosecutors and police allege, the robbery rampage included Little Caesar’s Pizza restaurants in White Center and Burien. The charging documents say Valencia-Alvarez has a record with juvenile assault and theft convictions as well as a current warrant in a malicious-mischief case, while Sandoval has a record including robbery and burglary, and had just gotten out of state prison a month before the robberies started. He’s being held in lieu of $2.2 million bail, while bail for Valencia-Alvarez is set at $750,000. (Bail was set at $900,000 for the other alleged accomplice, Recinos, who’s 20.)
Also in Crime Watch, one reader report:
REPEAT VISITOR: A resident near Lincoln Park says their security camera has caught this person repeatedly prowling his property, once to steal electricity to charge a phone, another time to try to break in, and a third time to vandalize:
(updated) The incidents have been reported to police.
And a reminder …
TALK WITH POLICE THURSDAY: The next West Seattle Crime Prevention Council meeting – your chance to hear from and ask questions of local police – is Thursday (January 12th), 7 pm, at the Southwest Precinct (2300 SW Webster).
| 28 COMMENTS