Arrest made in September armed robbery of Fayetteville woman
With the help of agencies from Brooklyn to Dunn, Fayetteville police have identified and charged three young men in a case involving a Morganton Road-area home armed robbery that occurred last fall. They believe the group will be tied to several similar cases that took place in the same week.
On Tuesday, police said financial transactions played a major part in the fraud and armed-robbery charges against the Brooklyn-area men, identified as 20-year-old Naquan Braddy, 18-year-old Anthony Barr and 23-year-old Emmanuel Jordan. Detectives are in the process of locating and extraditing the men from New York.
Darlene Ransom, who was held at gunpoint in her Summertime Drive home last September, would the first victim in a string of nearby home-invasion attacks.
She described the incident to ABC11 the week after the attack:
Darlene Ransom told ABC11 in September that the robber pointed the gun directly at her head before taking her purse and other belongings right outside her home.
Investigators said they believe Braddy was the attacker in that case. From Ransom's stolen purse, they said the group was able to carry out a check-cashing scheme.
"They were actually checks for rent that Ms. Ransom had gotten from her renters that she had rented out," said Lt. Mike Geske, a FPD detective with the Special Crimes Unit. "The checks ended up being washed-new numbers put on them, new amounts-that were deposited into their accounts, so based on Detective Abendanio's work, we were able to track that down."
Fayetteville police were able to track the suspects, through surveillance video and financial transactions carried out in Durham and Dunn, where they were stopped on I-95 in April, and charged with a number of other felony crimes. They say the group traveled between New York and Fayetteville because they have family in the area. During the home-invasion spree, detectives said all three lived in the Barrington Place Apartment complex, which backs up to the neighborhoods involved.
Here's background on the cases in which investigators believe they'll be able to tie the group to following their extradition.
Geske called the charges satisfying, noting months of work between Dunn, Durham and 83rd precinct detectives in New York City.
"Just because we didn't make an arrest two weeks after when it was hot in the press, they were constantly digging to find these people," Geske said.
The armed robbery took place in Ransom's garage just before 8 p.m. on Sept. 15. The incident occurred in the Huntington Subdivision off Morganton Road where Ransom and her husband have lived for more than two decades.
