Gold Chain Thieves Target Walmart Parking Lot
NORTH LAUDERDALE (CBS4) - On New Year's Eve, Alecia Campbell planned on a quick trip to a nearby Wal-Mart in North Lauderdale to pick up something to make for dinner for her family.
As she prepared to walk into the store around 3:30 pm, a young boy approached her.
He was "a baby," she said. "A baby and that's why I stopped because he looked like he was in distress."
The boy -- who Campbell estimated to be between 13 and 15 years of age -- asked her for the time.
Before she could answer, he grabbed the necklace she was wearing and pulled a pearl cross with gold tips off of it. Surveillance video from the Wal-Mart showed him running away as a stunned Campbell looks bewildered.
"I was devastated," she said.
The cross was no ordinary piece of jewelry. It holds tremendous sentimental value for Campbell.
She gave it to her mother several Christmases ago. Before her mother died last June, her mom returned it with one request.
"She it gave to me while she was in the hospital and asked me not to take it off," she told CBS 4's Carey Codd. "I put it on and vowed never to take it off again and someone took it from me."
Broward Sheriff's detectives said Campbell was only one of the victims of this thief on New Year's Eve in the same shopping plaza. Surveillance video shows the boy and an accomplice walking in front of the Wal-Mart on the day of the robberies, investigators said.
About 30 minutes after the attack on Campbell, a woman said a boy matching the same description offered to help her push a cart full of laundry into a Laundromat on the other side of the shopping plaza.
She thought he was being nice but she soon learned he wasn't.
The thief yanked a necklace from her neck and ran away. The victim, who did not want to reveal her name, showed CBS 4 the bruise left on her chest from the robbery. She called the incident "sad."
Her husband, Herman Carrasco, said his wife is still shaken up from the incident.
"She's very upset," he said. "This has never happened to her before. She's scared to go places."
Investigators said the boy was not yet done with his New Year's Eve crime spree.
Around 7:15 pm, a pair of women walking through the parking lot noticed a boy "approach them from behind," according to a Sheriff's Office report. The boy told them "he had been 'jumped' by some guys and needed some help."
The women told him to go into the Wal-Mart and call his mother.
As the boy walked away, the women told deputies, the boy tried to grab one of the women's necklaces. The woman ducked to avoid the would-be thief, who ran away.
Alecia Campbell feels like she lost a part of her mother in the robbery and remains in disbelief that a kid so young could be so callous.
"Brazen is the word," she said. "It's a matter of ignorance and it's a shame that at that age they're starting. So young. You know, what are you gonna get taking someone's chain and cross?"
If you have any information about these cases, call Broward County Crimestoppers at 954 493 TIPS or BSO Robbery Detective Cody Gill at (954) 321-4270.