By Gabriel Rom
Police said a serial robber who preys on the elderly has struck in both Queens and Brooklyn.
After the most recent incident this past Saturday, police said the crook has struck at least five times.
On Jan. 20, he followed a 76-year-old woman to her home by Myrtle Avenue and Weirfield Street in Ridgewood. When she reached her door, he wrapped his hands over her mouth, pushed her inside and robbed her at knifepoint.
The suspect then pointed a gun at an 87-year-old man inside the home and demanded more money, police said.
Police have connected the suspect to three more robberies in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
The past Saturday the suspect followed his victim to her apartment near Ocean Parkway and Beverly Road in Kensington at 4:40 p.m. Saturday, then knocked on her door, cops said. When she answered, he struck her in the face with a hard object and then fled without taking anything.
Emergency units took the woman to Maimonides Hospital in stable condition, police said.
On Feb. 11, in Park Slope, he followed a 71-year-old woman home, tried to tie her up, showed a gun and assaulted her in. He then robbed the victim, leaving her with an abrasion to her lip, police said. On March 2, he put a 91-year-old woman in a chokehold in her Ninth Street home in Park Slope, cops said.
Ridgewood has seen a slight increase in crime in recent months.
On March. 14, a suspect wanted in connection with the shooting of two men at a Ridgewood deli was found dead a short time later, slumped over his steering wheel in an apparent suicide, police said.
At around 1:50 a.m., the suspect entered Mike’s Deli Grocery, located at 20-60 Gates Ave., and shot two of the deli’s employees after getting into a verbal dispute with them, police said.
Two weeks before the Myrtle Avenue assault, three men were arrested for allegedly attacking a 21-year-old man with a machete on St. Nicholas Avenue early New Year’s Day, police said.
According to a criminal complaint from the Queens district attorney’s office, the three identified suspects punched the male victim and threw him to the ground. Soon after the suspects along with seven unidentified suspects attacked the victim with a machete, causing lacerations to the victim’s face, shoulder, back and chest, police said,
Reach reporter Gabriel Rom by e-mail at grom@
