‘Find My iPhone’ app leads to arrest of 3 suspects
Three USC students were robbed at gunpoint late Tuesday night while walking in a Five Points alley.
The students were walking up a hill from the Wells Fargo bank parking lot to Pavlov’s Bar when three people wearing bandanas over their faces got out of a car, according to an incident report and one of the victims, who asked not to be named because of the nature of the crime.
The victims told police they thought the driver stayed in the car.
The suspects who got out of the car brandished a handgun and demanded the students’ purses and wallets. No one was injured.
Crawford Cornelius, 18; BeQuan Recasner, 19; and Shanetra Jones, 21, were arrested in connection with the robbery and charged with armed robbery, first-degree assault and battery and the possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime.
The three students had been walking with a fourth who was able to get away, one victim said. The student said she had also tried to run away but was tackled to the ground. Others were forced to the ground as well, according to the report.
Columbia police spokeswoman Jennifer Timmons wasn’t sure if the suspects had more than one gun but said it didn’t matter under the law.
“The hand of one is the hand of all,” Timmons said.
Police made arrests in the case within a matter of hours because, along with the roughly $20 and sundry other items, the men made off with an iPhone.
Using the “Find My iPhone” application, officers tracked the suspects as they moved through Columbia to an apartment complex on East Chapel Drive, where they found a car that matched victims’ descriptions.
Timmons said Columbia police have “definitely maintained” an increased presence in Five Points after a brawl and a pair of shootings in February.
That month students were robbed at gunpoint twice on the edge of campus and a woman was raped near East Quad; she believed the man to be armed.
Police have no immediate plans to change their strategy in the area, but Timmons urged vigilance among the bar district’s patrons.