Police said they have arrested four people following a brazen middle-of-the-day theft last Thursday from a shop on Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village, during which nearly 50 designer handbags and accessories, together valued at $91,600, were stolen. The robbery took less than 30 seconds from start to finish, police said. A fifth suspect remained at large.
The suspects, three men and two women, led multiple law enforcement agencies on a high-speed chase through the Hamptons and west on Sunrise Highway until their vehicle, a black Dodge Durango, got a flat tire in Manorville near Exit 69 on the Long Island Expressway.
The incident took place around 1:30 p.m. at Balenciaga, where at least one employee hid in a basement stock room while the group allegedly robbed the shop. It began when a woman wearing a pink ski mask and matching beige jacket and sweatpants entered the store while talking on her cellphone. “You know I don’t like shopping last minute,” she was overheard to say.
She asked the shop’s associate director, Franco Polar, if she could try on a pair of yellow sneakers, and continued to look around while he called an assistant to fetch the sneakers from the basement. “All of a sudden,” Mr. Polar said in his statement to police, “three or four males came into the store all at once. They all had masks on . . . They started grabbing merchandise off the shelves in front of the store in a hurry. I started yelling, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ from the rear of the store. It all happened so fast. Before I realized it, they were running out of the store with all this merchandise.”
Michael Mustazza, who works at the Oliver Peoples store across the street, told police he had seen a group of people running out of Balenciaga “with all these handbags in their arms.” The getaway car, he said, had tinted windows and lacked license plates. Some of the handbags fell out of the suspects’ arms as they jumped into the car, which sped through the Reutershan parking lot toward Main Street.
A village police officer quickly spotted the Durango and pursued it along Montauk Highway to attempt a traffic stop, but the suspects did not comply.
“The pursuit was called off so as not to create an unsafe situation to the public when the vehicle’s driver began driving recklessly at a high rate of speed,” Lt. Jeffrey Erickson said in a press release.
On the lookout for the Durango, a state trooper spotted it on Sunrise Highway in the vicinity of Westhampton Beach. After a tire blew out on the L.I.E., all five suspects fled on foot into the woods. A county police helicopter, county and state police K-9 units, and Seventh Precinct officers were called in, and by 6:30 p.m. four of the five suspects had been apprehended and were being held at the State Police barracks in Riverside. As of press time yesterday, the fifth person was still at large.
Each of the four was charged with one count of second-degree grand larceny and one count of third-degree criminal possession of stolen property, which are felonies. They were arraigned in East Hampton Town Justice Court on Friday by Justice Lisa Rana. According to state police, they will also be arraigned in Suffolk County Criminal Court in Central Islip; County District Attorney Ray Tierney is said to be seeking a grand jury indictment as well.
Those charged are all from Newark, N.J. They are Ali Abul Harris, 28; Jamal Revelt Johns, 25; Wazir Roberts, 24; and Bahseemah Tamika Davis, 34. Each reportedly has a criminal record.
As of Tuesday, Mr. Johns remained in custody because his earlier convictions were felonies; the others have been released without bail on their own recognizance, as the crime was not violent in nature.
Mr. Johns was expected back in Justice Court this morning; Mr. Harris, Mr. Roberts, and Ms. Davis will return on March 23. Police have not released the fifth suspect’s name or description.
Last Thursday afternoon as the incident was unfolding, East Hampton School District officials ordered a 10-minute lockout at the John M. Marshall Elementary School, during which all students and staff members remained indoors. Karen Kuneth, the school principal, confirmed that the lockout was related to the theft and high-speed chase. “There was no threat to our building at any time,” she wrote in an email to families at 2 p.m.
According to state police, “numerous handbags” were recovered after the four were apprehended. Mr. Polar provided police with an itemized list of the 47 purses, tote bags, and accessories, which retail from $1,090 up to $3,050, that were allegedly taken.