4 Arrested In Killing Of Clerk At Milpitas 7-Eleven
MILPITAS (CBS SF) -- Four people have been arrested in the 2012 murder and robbery of a Milpitas convenience store clerk who was shot after three suspects entered the business and stole only about $200, police said Thursday.
Jerry Coneal, 19, Warner Travis, 19 and Delmon Armstead, 19, were arrested Friday and Bianca Barrow, 20, was captured sometime last weekend in the killing of Mohammad "Moe" Sadeghzadeh, Milpitas Police Chief Steve Pangelinan said.
All four were arrested on suspicion of murder and robbery, Pangelinan said.
Pangelinan, at a news conference at Milpitas police headquarters, declined to say how police obtained evidence to arrest the suspects but did say the department was relieved it solved the city's only murder of 2012.
The four arrests were the result of "hours and hours of surveillance and a lot of other good investigative work" as well as intelligence provided by the Menlo Park Police Department, Pangelinan said.
"For us, a small community like Milpitas, we have had very few homicides, this really hit home for this community," Pangelinan said.
"It was a whodunit homicide when initially it was given to us," he said. "So we put forth untold hours over these last 15 months to try and bring some sense to it as best we could."
4 Arrested In Killing Of Clerk At Milpitas 7-Eleven
Around 2:15 a.m. on Sept. 8, 2012, Milpitas police were dispatched to a 7-Eleven store at 1496 N. Milpitas Blvd., only a short distance from police headquarters on the same street, on a report of an injured employee, police said.
Sadeghzadeh, 67, employed as a night clerk at the store, was found with a single bullet wound and declared dead at the scene, police said.
Video surveillance footage showed three males, armed with handguns, wearing black hooded sweatshirts and with their faces partially covered, entering the store.
Some Milpitas police officers worked 18 to 20 hours a day to piece together evidence and got to know Sadeghzadeh's family and the impact his death had on them, Pangelinan said.
"It struck a chord due to the horrific nature of the case," Pangelinan said.
When police believed they had enough probable cause, they arrested Coneal at the Maguire Correctional Facility, San Mateo County's jail in Redwood City where he was serving time for an unrelated crime, and arrested Travis, Armstead and Barrow in Menlo Park, police said.
Coneal and Armstead were 17 at the time of the murder-robbery while Travis was 18 and Barrow, 19, according to Pangelinan.
Milpitas police spokesman Sgt. Gene Smith said that Coneal, Armstead and Barrow were residents of Menlo Park and Travis was from Las Vegas, Nev.
Pangelinan said the perpetrators of the murder and robbery got away with only about $200 from the store cash register, which made it "a senseless crime."
Armstead, Travis and Barrow are currently housed in the Santa Clara County Main Jail, Smith said.
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