Violent Crimes Stack up in The Hollow
The typical police blotter for this paper consists of a handful of car and home burglaries, a slew of shoplifting at NorthPark Center, and a sprinkling of vandalism. Kid stuff, really. And we like it that way. A boring police blotter=a safe community.
However, this weekend there were three violent robberies in our ‘hood. While that’s not an outlandish number of crimes, it is unusual for our coverage area (which by the way, is defined as Hillcrest Road to Midway Road, and Forest Lane to Mockingbird-ish. There’s a fair bit of gerrymandering going on, but you get the gist).
We don’t cover the area west of Midway, where Google Maps labels “Preston Hollow.”
April 29
Around 4 p.m., three assailants attacked woman as she got out of her car in the 6000 block of Forest Lane, punching and kicking her while stealing $200 in cash and two diamond rings worth $300.
April 30
At 1:30 a.m., two men robbed a Bluffview resident of his keys, cash, camera, and phone at gunpoint in the 4500 block of Cherokee Trail. According to police, the man was accosted as he arrived home in his black 2000 two-door Porsche. The robbers approached him with semiautomatic pistols, demanded he get out of the car, and said “Give me everything you got, or I’ll shoot you.” The man complied, producing Land Rover keys worth $500, $80 cash, a $450 Cannon digital camera, and two iPhones worth $900. One of the robbers then told the man, “Lie down or I’ll shoot you.” Again, the man complied but kept an eye on his assailants. Shortly after this, the other robber told him to go lay down across the street. The man watched as the robbers attempted to pry open the hood of his Porsche, and while they were distracted, he ran away on foot and contacted police in the 5100 block of West Lovers Lane.
At 7:53 a.m., a man knocked on the back door of Natural Grocers in the 11600 block of Preston Road. According to police, the man was standing next to a pile of boxes and the store manager believed he was making a delivery. When the manager opened the door, the man threw the boxes at him, entered the store, and pulled out a gun. The man demanded to be taken to the second floor office “where the money was kept.” However, upon arrival the man did not find any money and demanded to go to the safe room, where they found another employee counting $2,500 in cash. The man took both the employees’ cell phones, cut the main phone line, and had one of the employees dump the cash into a black draw-string bag. He told the employees to stay in the safe room, and fled the store on foot through a fire exit, which set off an alarm. A third employee unaware of the robbery came out because of the alarm, but the robber had already left.
For more coverage of local crime, pick up the May 6 edition of Preston Hollow People.
