[Vision2020] GPS System Leads to Speedy Arrests

[Tom Hansen]

>From the Timed-Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia) -

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GPS system leads to speedy arrests
BY JIM NOLAN
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Thursday, November 9, 2006

RELATED: Police Beat

Leave it to a band of low-tech armed robbers to rent a getaway car with a
global positioning system.

Suffice it to say, the car wasn't hard to find.

It all began Tuesday evening at the Pizza Hut restaurant at West Broad
Street and Davis Avenue near the northeast edge of Richmond's Fan District.

Police said witnesses observed four young men emerge from a gold-colored
Ford Crown Victoria parked in the rear of the parking lot behind the
restaurant.

After loitering in the back lot for several minutes, the men advanced on the
eatery, with at least two of them donning ski masks and one carrying a gun,
witnesses told police.

Maj. David McCoy said the men demanded money from the cash register and also
robbed the store manager, leaving moments later with roughly $300.

Witnesses observed the men get into the car and drive off, and recorded the
license plate of the Ford.

The information was provided to police, who learned the vehicle was
registered to a rental-car agency just blocks from the Pizza Hut.

McCoy said the owner of the rental agency was able to track his vehicles
through their GPS systems, and pinpointed the Ford a short distance away,
near Chamberlayne Avenue and Lombardy Street.

As police mobilized, the rental-agency owner was also able to send a signal
to disable the vehicle, stranding the occupants.

Within minutes, police arrested three men, including 18-year-old Randolph
Lamont Pervall of the 4100 block of North Avenue.

McCoy said Pervall was a student at John Marshall High School. Two juveniles
also were arrested, one another Marshall student and the other a student at
Boushall Middle School. Police were still searching last night for a fourth
suspect.

One of the juveniles is also suspected in a recent robbery of a 7-Eleven
store in South Richmond, McCoy said.

Police recovered a ski mask, a .32-caliber handgun and most of the cash
believed to have been stolen from the Pizza Hut, said Sgt. Tim Wyatt,
supervisor of detectives in the 3rd Precinct's Focus Mission Team.

No one was injured in the robbery, solved by Detectives Reuben Albright and
Dexter Gadson in about the same amount of time it takes to have a pizza
delivered.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving
safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in
sideways, chocolate in one hand, a drink in the other, body thoroughly used
up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO. What a ride!'"