3 charged with robbing high school students
By Brian Stanley bstanley@stmedianetwork.com May 17, 2012 4:10PM
Updated: July 1, 2012 11:42AM
JOLIET — Police say a trio of muggers who waylaid students walking to school Tuesday morning were recognized and identified from social media.
Uriel Cardenas, 19, of 221 N. Hickory St.; Adrian Resendiz, 17, of 600 Manhattan Road; and Juan C. Sanchez, 17, of 1021 Summit St., were arrested and booked into the county jail on charges of robbery after allegedly taking cell phones.
Cmdr. Brian Benton said a 15-year-old girl approached Joliet Central liaison Detective Ken Simonich on campus around 7:10 a.m. to say she had been robbed.
“She’d been walking to school at Herkimer and Benton streets when a black car pulled up and a man got out and began asking what she had,” Benton said. “She ignored him and kept walking but another passenger got out and hit her, giving her a bloody nose.”
The two men took a cell phone from her backpack and got back in the car.
“She recognized Cardenas as the man who’d talked to her from his Facebook profile and was going to show it to Detective Simonich, but as they were going to do that, two other students approached him,” Benton said.
The 14- and 15-year-old boys had been walking near the same intersection about 10 minutes earlier when they were also threatened and robbed by three men in a black car who took a cell phone and cash.
Benton said those victims also recognized Cardenas and later identified him to police.
At 1:30 p.m. the suspects were found in the parking lot of Wendy’s at Center and Jefferson streets with open liquor in the vehicle.
“They were taken into custody and brought to the station. During transport one of the suspects dropped a cell phone in the back seat that belonged to one of the victims,” Benton said.
