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SOUTH BEND -- A rash of robberies plagued several city neighborhoods from midnight Sunday to midnight Monday, including one in which men allegedly ransacked a home and another where a 75-year-old man said he tried to fight off a carjacking suspect, police said.
South Bend police investigated at least five robberies in a roughly 24-hour period, four of which were armed. Three occurred on or around Lincoln Way West.
Just after midnight Sunday, a man said two men with faces hidden in scarves and semi-automatic guns threatened him outside his residence on Florine Court.
The man said they hit him with the guns and forced their way into his home, ransacking it looking for valuables, police said.
The man reported the robbers stole a laptop, video recorder, two cell phones, several car CD players and his wallet.
In another incident early Sunday morning, police said two men in ski masks and semi-automatic handguns held up a 7-Eleven store on the 1800 block of Miami Street.
The clerk told police the men loaded cash from the register into grocery bags and ran away around 3:20 a.m.
Police said officers searched for an armed man in his late 20s with dreadlocks who allegedly told a man that he would blow his brains out if he didn't have cash.
The man was parked at Sam's Food Mart at 1336 Lincoln Way W. around 8:45 p.m. Sunday, police said. He told officers the man pointed the gun through the cracked window until he handed over cigarettes, an iPhone and $15.
On Sunday evening, an elderly man, 75, told police a man he thought he recognized jumped into the passenger seat his car and demanded money just after 9 p.m.
While the car was stopped on the 700 block of Lincoln Way West, the older man said he punched the man in the face.
The two men struggled in the car until the car owner got out of the vehicle to try to force the man out of the passenger seat, the man told officers.
But the man jumped into the driver's seat and fled with the car, police said.
Police said the man did not report seeing a weapon.
Police arrested two people early Monday suspected of robbing a teenager at gunpoint on the 1000 block of North O'Brien Street.
The teen, 17, said a group of about three men brandished a gun and took her purse around 8 p.m. after she got coffee at a gas station nearby.
Police rounded up a group who matched a description, and found two shotgun shells and the woman's wallet in one of the suspect's backpacks.
Police booked one man in the St. Joseph County Jail and another was sent to the Juvenile Justice Center.
Staff writer Madeline Buckley:
mbuckley@sbtinfo.com
574-235-6337