Police from the 111th Precinct in Bayside are looking for two masked purse snatchers who targeted a 70-year-old woman on a residential street in Murray Hill and allegedly grabbed her pocketbook that contained thousands of dollars.
The grand larceny occurred just after 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 16, as the senior was walking near 45th Avenue and 196th Street, a block west of Francis Lewis Boulevard, just south of Northern Boulevard. The stranger approached her from behind and snatched the pocketbook from her hand and then fled the crime scene in a black Chevrolet traveling westbound toward Utopia Parkway. The woman was not injured during the encounter.
A police spokesman said Friday that her pocketbook contained $4,800 in cash, her Samsung cell phone, her credit cards, her driver’s license, and house keys.
The NYPD released surveillance images of the suspects and their getaway car on Wednesday, but could not describe them because they were masked. One wore a black hooded sweatshirt, black pants, white sneakers, a blue face mask, and blue latex gloves. His accomplice wore a distinctive black hooded sweatshirt with white specks on it, black pants, black shoes, a blue face mask, and blue latex gloves.
Anyone with information regarding this grand larceny investigation is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at crimestoppers.nypdonline.org or on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) @NYPDTips. All calls and messages are kept confidential.
Through April 27, the 11th Precinct has reported 133 grand larcenies so far in 2025, twenty fewer than the 153 reported at the same point last year, a decline of 13.1%, according to the most recent CompStat report.
