A team of armed thugs terrorized the streets of Hyattsville on Wednesday morning, according to police, sticking guns in people’s faces as they made their way to work and pulling a driver from a Lexus.
In the span of 20 minutes, three or four armed men are believed to have jointly committed five robberies and attempted two carjackings, said Prince George’s County police spokesman Cpl. Mike Rodriguez.
“People were trying to get to work,” Rodriguez said. “It makes them easy targets.”
The men were able to move around quickly using a gray minivan, possibly a Chrysler, Rodriguez said.
“We believe the crimes are related because it all happened within a close area within a 20-minute period,” he said.
The first robbery was at 7:29 a.m. on the 7100 block of Varnum Street, police said. They struck again two minutes later and one street over on the 4400 block of 72nd Avenue.
Within five minutes, the armed men popped up again on the 6500 block of Osborn Road near the Old Landover Neighborhood Park, about a mile from the 72nd Avenue robbery, police said.
At 7:41 a.m., another robbery was reported on the 5200 block of Wiley Street, quickly covering the two miles to the backstreet near Glenridge Park, police said. Two minutes later and a half-mile away, the robbing team carjacked a Lexus on the 6600 block of Furman Parkway.
They were unsuccessful when they attempted to oust a driver from a minivan on the 6600 block of Annapolis Road at 7:49, police said.
But between stealing the Lexus and failing to nab the minivan, the men robbed another citizen on the 4800 block of 66th Avenue, police said. That robbery was about a mile from the Furman Parkway carjacking and sits on the five-mile path the robbers are believed to have taken to the failed Annapolis Road carjacking.
Rodriguez said it was not clear how much personal property the thugs made off with in each of the street robberies, but they were successful in each attempt.
There were no further details immediately available on the culprits.
