Two people suspected of robbing an off-duty Long Beach police officer at gunpoint last month have been taken into custody, police announced Monday.<\/p>\n
On Friday, officers were assisted by SWAT personnel from Long Beach and Los Angeles in executing search warrants in Los Angeles County, leading them to a 22-year-old man and a 16-year-old, who were both taken into custody, according to the Long Beach Police Department.<\/p>\n
Mellaki Hanzome Easter and the 16-year-old suspect were each booked into the Long Beach City Jail on suspicion of two counts of robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.<\/p>\n
Easter was being held on $100,000 bail, while the 16-year-old was being held without bail. Both suspects are residents of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
The robbery occurred at about 1:30 p.m. on July 12, according to the LBPD. The off-duty LBPD officer was near Bixby Road and Orange Avenue when he was allegedly accosted and robbed by Easter and the 16-year-old at gunpoint.<\/p>\n
Police said the officer fired several shots at the suspects, who fled the scene in a black 2006-11 Mercedes ML350 with a temporary registration sticker in the front window on the passenger side.<\/p>\n
The vehicle was described as having five-spoke wheels, tinted windows on the right front passenger side, the right rear passenger side, and the rear window, which was reported broken out or damaged.<\/p>\n
Further descriptions noted a temporary California license plate at the time of the robbery, prior damage to the right passenger doors, missing chrome molding on the right rear door, a missing center cap on the right front tire, black roof rails, and a sunroof.<\/p>\n
Easter was arrested by officers assigned to the LBPD in the 1300 block of 118th Street, while the 16-year-old was arrested by officers assigned to the LAPD in the 12200 block of Elva Avenue.<\/p>\n
The case has been presented to the Los Angeles County District Attorney\u2019s Office for formal filing consideration.<\/p>\n
Detectives also learned that the same suspects allegedly were involved in an additional robbery in the city of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Anyone with information related to the robbery was urged to contact homicide detectives Hutchinson or Valenzuela at 562-570-7244. Tipsters who prefer to remain anonymous can call Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477 or visit lacrimestoppers.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two people suspected of robbing an off-duty Long Beach police officer at gunpoint last month have been taken…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2040,19063,131,133,132,170,2322,2480],"class_list":["post-429648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-arrested","tag-lbpd","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-off-duty","tag-officer","tag-robbery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}