Disturbing footage showed two girls being attacked and looted on a sidewalk while they were walking to school, the LAPD reported. The robbery took place on the 7200 block of Melrose Avenue near FairFax High School around 7:20 am on Wednesday. According to police, the sisters were walking to school when two women snuck up behind them and attacked the girls.
According to the police, the suspects demanded the girls to hand over their phones to them and held them by the hair until they gave up. A CCTV in the store nearby captured the attack, most of which, however, was blocked from view because of an opaque window.
Along with the women, there were two men who were said to be on the lookout and appeared briefly on the screen before the four of them fled the scene in a black sedan with tinted windows. Police are now seeking the public's help in identifying the four suspects involved in the robbery.
Street robbery
In the surveillance footage released by the police, one of the suspects, described by the police as an 18-year-old woman, wrestled one of the girls' phones and held her by the hair until she gave in and told the attacker her code. The other suspect was described as a black female.
"She started punching me in the eye, ripping out my hair and punching me like all over my body," Alexa Meza, a senior at Fairfax High School said describing her ordeal, FOX11News reported. Her sister Mia tried to help her but was pulled back by one of the suspects.
Two black males were on the lookout as the robbery went down, according to the police. It is not clear if the victims and the suspects knew each other.
The otherwise safe Melrose-Fairfax area saw multiple incidents of robberies over the past year, the New York Post reported. Just half a mile away from Wednesday's mugging, a group of five men attempted to loot a residence in an armed robbery last year.
