After several days of high tension in Oakland's typically quiet Trestle Glen neighborhood following an attempted robbery that injured a toddler with bullet shrapnel, Oakland police did a full-court press with undercover officers and they say they've made multiple arrests, or at least one arrest.
The robbery incident happened Tuesday morning on the 800 block of Trestle Glen Road by Lakeshore Avenue, when a nanny was walking a 15-month-old girl in a stroller. As she told KTVU, she felt something on her neck and heard a man say "Don't move," and he demanded her purse. The woman wouldn't let go of her purse and began screaming, which she says prompted the suspect to pull a gun and shoot it at the ground. Shrapnel from the bullet struck the child in the leg and injured her.
The suspect fled and there were apparently two suspect vehicles in the area, per the OPD, a Kia Forte and Kia Sportage.
The SFPD informed the community Wednesday night, at a community meeting at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, that it had arrested multiple suspects who appeared to be casing businesses, and were up to no good in multiple jurisdictions.
"We utilized all of our undercover officers," said Deputy Chief James Beere, per KTVU. "We followed them. We saw them going into other neighborhoods in the Bay Area. They came back into Oakland. Again, I can’t go into specifics, but they were actually in this neighborhood casing businesses as well as people walking on the street. At that point we made the determination to stop them from victimizing someone else. We arrested multiple individuals in that vehicle."
There was a separate incident near Trestle Glen Road on Sunday that appears to be connected as well. As KTVU reports, a woman named Stephanie said she was likely followed home by a vehicle after stopping to make a deposit at a Wells Fargo ATM at Lakeshore Avenue and Trestle Glen Road — right near where the nanny would be accosted two days later.
"I noticed that a car was behind me, but that's not unusual, but when I did turn onto my street, you know, I did take note that the car was still behind me," Stephanie tells the station. She described how she pulled into a church parking lot near her home, and that's where two cars boxed her in — likely the same Kia Forte and Kia Sportage seen in the nanny incident, Stephanie says.
There's a bit of confusion about how many individuals the OPD now has in custody, or how many they may still be looking for. KTVU said that Beere mentioned multiple arrests at Wednesday's meeting, but then later made reference to only one. "We did make an arrest," Beere reportedly said, adding, "I think we still need to more investigation to find the person that's responsible and find the people that were with them."
And police are cautioning that no one should resist in the case of an armed robbery, as both women did in the cases mentioned above.
"We're asking individuals who might be approached by someone, whether they're armed or not, to not resist," said Officer Kim Armstead, an Oakland police spokesperson, to KTVU.