Update: This article was updated at 12:25 p.m. on Dec. 15 to include comments from MBPD.
One of the victims of the armed robbery that took place on 41st Street on Wednesday night has identified what she believes is the suspect’s car in surveillance video captured by a nearby restaurant, where she and a friend had been right before the robbery.
On Friday, the restaurant, which asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, turned the video over to Manhattan Beach police.
The victim, a 36-year-old psychotherapist, spoke to Easy Reader about the experience but didn’t want her name published to protect her safety.
She had gone to a concert earlier in the day and went to the restaurant that night with a friend to get some food. The kitchen was already closed, but the victim knew one of the restaurant’s employees, so they talked for about five or 10 minutes before the victim and her friend walked five blocks north on Highland Avenue to her house on 41st Street in between Highland Avenue and Ocean Drive.
The two were standing in her driveway waiting for an Uber car to pick up her friend when she noticed a white four-door sedan cruising down her street slowly a little before midnight.
“It was so foggy that night,” she said. “I just saw headlights coming really, really slowly. So I thought, ‘Your Uber’s here, perfect.’”
But as the car got closer, she noticed that it looked like it was from the 1990s.
“I remember thinking, ‘That’s an odd Uber car,’ because usually they’re somewhat newer.”
The car looked “dumpy,” she said, and had dark tinted windows. As it pulled up to the curb of her driveway, one of the rear windows rolled down and a man wearing a black leather glove pointed a gun at the pair.
“I saw a .45 Glock come out the window,” she said. “I was just stunned.”
She saw three men inside, and the one pointing the gun spoke.
“He said, ‘I’m not [expletive] around, you guys.’”
“He looked at me and said, ‘Give me everything that’s valuable if you want to live,’ or something like that.’”
The man opened the door, and she noticed that there was no light anywhere inside the car, including on the dashboard.
“I could tell he wanted me to hand him the purse,” she said. “I just had the thought, ‘If I get close, he could grab my hand and pull me in.’”
She tossed her Alexander Wang purse, which she said was worth around $1,000 and contained her house and car keys, credit cards and her driver’s license, to the man.
Her friend handed over his iPhone 6 and wallet, which she said contained about $100 in cash.
Then the car drove down 41st Street toward the water before making a right on Ocean Drive.
“The scary thing is they just went slowly down the street,” she said. “You could tell they felt very secure.”
She said the group seemed like professional criminals.
“They were calm and collected,” she said. “That was the creepy thing about it. They were out looking for people to rob.”
Since her keys were stolen, the woman couldn’t get into her house. But she hadn’t given up her cellphone, which was in her back pocket, so she went into her car, which was unlocked, and called the police.
Her friend had mobile locator software downloaded on his phone, so they attempted to locate it, but they found it had already been deactivated.
“They’d thrown out the SIM card within four minutes,” said the woman.
The police suggested she not spend the night at her house, and she still hasn’t since the robbery.
“I don’t think they’ll come back because everyone’s on alert,” she said. “But I don’t want to stay there.”
After reviewing the video footage from the restaurant with a detective, the woman believes she’s identified the car. She said it appears on camera initially driving south on Highland Avenue and then makes a right. It then reappears later, going north on Highland.
“You can see me coming out of [the restaurant] and can see the car coming right behind us,” she said.
Because of the heavy fog, however, it’s hard to make out the license plate, she said.
Since the car is first seen going in the opposite direction, she believes it was cruising around the area for a while before it followed her home.
“What the police said was that they were looking for people,” she said. “I just happened to be an easy target.”
MBPD Detective Michael Rosenberger said that the car may have been in the area for about half an hour before the robbery.
“I don’t know what they were doing but looking for victims is a possibility,” he wrote in an email.
The victim hopes that anyone with exterior video footage taken between 11 p.m. and 12 a.m. on Wednesday night in El Porto will come forward.
Police told her that the fact that she was distracted looking at her phone made her vulnerable, she said.
“It could’ve happened to anybody walking on the street at night,” she said. “It was 11:30 p.m., not 2 a.m.”
The woman changed the locks on her house immediately. She said she waited to cancel her credit cards to see if they were used, but as of Friday, they hadn’t been.
She never experienced anything similar on her street before and had always felt safe in her house before the incident.
“I’ll definitely get a security camera system,” she said. “Or move. It freaked me out.”
“I was literally staring down the barrel of a gun. All I can think of is the guy with the ski mask, looking down a Glock.” ER
