Midtown Man Robbed Outside Apartment

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A man was robbed at gunpoint steps from his Midtown apartment earlier this week, continuing a disturbing trend of crime that has plagued Midtown for months.

Matthew Jones was just outside his apartment in the 300 block of 8th Street around 10 p.m. on Wednesday when two men approached him, forced him to the ground, and stole his car keys, wallet, and phone, according to a police report. Jones described the robbers as black males between 17-23. The suspect with the gun was wearing a white tank top and dark colored shorts, with a high-top fade, Jones said. The pair were last seen walking up 8th Street towards Argonne Ave.

To add insult to injury, the robbers returned to Jones’ apartment just after 1 a.m. Thursday and used his keys to steal his car from the apartment’s parking lot. Jones’ car is a dark gray 2014 Chevrolet Impala with Georgia tags and a Mississippi State sticker on the rear window, according to a police report.

Jones’ robbery is one in a growing list of violent crimes in the neighborhood; there have been at least six armed robberies in the area since June 21, Project Q and WSB-TV say.

On June 15, two people walking from Caribou Coffee to a bar on Ponce de Leon Avenue were attacked and robbed at gunpoint by two men. The victims told WSB-TV that they readily surrendered their wallets and phones to the robbers but were beaten up anyway.

According to the department’s crime report for Week 26 (June 21-27), there have been 21 rapes, 142 robberies, 127 aggravated assaults, and 127 burglaries in Midtown’s Zone 5 this year. The incidence of rape is up 133 percent since this time last year, and the number of aggravated assaults has jumped by 53 percent, the figures show.

Arrests are keeping pace with crimes, with 9 arrests made last week alone, the department tells Project Q and WSB-TV. The department’s crime report shows that between Jan. 1 and June 27, police have arrested four murder suspects, five rape suspects, 47 robbery suspects, 60 aggravated assault suspects, and 11 burglary suspects for crimes committed in Zone 5.

The Midtown Ponce Security Alliance, a neighborhood watch group, reported several robberies and burglaries in May, with a burglary on May 2, two robberies on May 4, a further robbery on May 5, a burglary on May 13, and a further burglary on May 14.

On May 2, a man who may have been using meth was caught outside a home on Penn Avenue attempting to walk away with items he had just stolen out of that house; on May 4, a student dropped his bookbag for armed robbers after one of the suspects told his partners to “waste” the student for noncompliance; on May 5, the wife of the owner of a laundromat was struck with a handgun during the course of an armed robbery of the business.