Skip to content
Crime & Justice
Link copied to clipboard

Thug-in-training, 13, nabbed in string of gunpoint robbery attempts

Police arrested a 13-year-old boy Wednesday in connection with a series of at least five attempted gunpoint robberies in West Philadelphia.

This post has been updated

Police arrested a 13-year-old boy Wednesday in connection with a series of at least five attempted gunpoint robberies in West Philadelphia.

The boy has two prior robbery arrests on his record, and was also cited for disorderly conduct in 2010, when he allegedly threatened a teacher at Universal Bluford Charter School in the Carroll Park section of West Philadelphia and threw a chair at a door.

Cops found the boy in a deli on Farragut Street near Chestnut around 10:35 Wednesday morning and took him into custody without incident. He confessed to the attempted robberies during an interview.

The boy told police that a silver handgun he used during the attempted robberies was a BB gun. He told detectives that he put the gun in his mother's purse before he left home, and cops said he was not carrying the gun at the time of his arrest.

Police have yet to speak to the boy's mother and are charging him with robbery and weapons violations.

He was being held in the Southwest Detective Division on Pine Street near 55th Wednesday and police expected him to be eventually be moved to the Youth Study Center.