Four suspects have been arrested and charged for crimes relating to a late March robbery of a Canadian film crew working at SF's Twin Peaks, and a second robbery three days later in Oakland.
The robbery at gunpoint of a visiting Canadian film crew on March 25 was captured by onlookers on video, and spread around the world in one of the most recent examples of bad press for San Francisco and its brazen crime situation. The masked thieves were seen assaulting the victims, pointing guns, and loading $35,000 worth of camera equipment into their waiting car. The license plate on the getaway vehicle, a silver Infiniti, is pretty clearly visible, so it looks like investigators made pretty quick work of finding the culprits.
As KPIX reports, via the Alameda County DA's office, three men have now been charged with four counts of felony second-degree robbery in this and a second robbery in Oakland: Deleon Miller, Torrion King, and Teddy Williams. King was on parole at the time of the robberies, and Miller was reportedly on felony probation — and both now face additional gun charges for being felons in possession of a gun.
The alleged getaway driver in the Twin Peaks robbery, Ronnell Johnson, has been charged with three counts of felony second-degree robbery, and he apparently had a separate pending robbery case in San Francisco as well.
OPD investigators say they were investigating a March 28th armed robbery in Oakland when they realized that Miller, King, and Williams were also likely involved in the Twin Peaks case. The Oakland case involved items that the victims were able to electronically track by GPS, which led to the arrests, investigators say.
This was a repeat of an all-too-frequent crime that has been seen in San Francisco and the East Bay in recent years, in which TV news crews (most often) are robbed at gunpoint of their expensive camera equipment — which is clearly valuable on the black market. Just a year earlier, in March 2021, a KPIX news crew working at Twin Peaks was robbed at gunpoint in similar fashion. A KPIX crew was similarly robbed in Oakland in April 2019.
The original Instagram video of the Twin Peaks robbery included a slew of predictable comments like "vote Red" and "where r u Boudin?" But it looks like Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley will be handling this, with charges pertaining to robberies in both cities.
And as for the Canadian film crew, at least some of their film equipment was reportedly recovered, along with some of the stolen items in the March 28th incident.
Previously: Canadian Film Crew Robbed at Gunpoint Friday Night Atop Twin Peaks