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STAMFORD, Conn. — Three students from Stamford Academy were arrested Thursday morning on charges of taking another student’s iPhone, Lt. Diedrich Hohn said Friday.
Tyrell Williams, 18, and two other students, a 17-year-old male and a 16-year-old female, pushed down a male student and kept him down while they took his phone, Hohn said. When police arrived at the school, Williams ran and hopped over a fence before being caught by officers, he said.
Police and school officials were unable to find the phone, which had been reset, disabling its tracking capabilities, Hohn said.
Williams was charged with second-degree robbery, conspiracy to commit second-degree robbery, sixth-degree larceny, conspiracy to commit sixth-degree larceny and interfering/resisting, police said. The two juveniles were each charged with second-degree robbery, conspiracy to commit second-degree robbery, sixth-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit sixth-degree larceny, police said.
Hohn believes there may be a connection between this incident and a string of cellphone robberies in Stamford in which juvenile males on bicycles ride up behind women and snatch their phones. Nine or 10 incidents like that have occurred in the past month, he said.
Other than in the Stamford Academy theft; all of the victims have been female, and in each case there have been two or three black males, ages 14 to 16, wearing hoodies and coming up from behind the victims on BMX-style bicycles, he said.
Most of the cases have also taken place near the train station, between 4 and 7 p.m., he said.
According to Hohn, phones nationwide are stolen and reset so they can’t be tracked. The phones are then sold for cash, he said.
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