'Master Criminals' Leave Telltale Evidence During the Getaway

If you’re inclined toward criminality watch your footsteps, particularly if fresh snow coats the ground. Winter snowfall helped cops trip up a couple of suspected armed robbers in the last week.

A 21-year-old Chicago man is in custody after police officers traced his footsteps from the scene of a crime Friday, a party where a teen-ager was beaten and three people were robbed at gunpoint of their cell phones and a Galaxy tablet. Upon arriving, police heard people in an alley of the East Chatham neighborhood. They followed footsteps in the snow, which led them to a porch and eventually Dominique Horton, 21, according to prosecutors. Horton was identified as the assailant by the victims, reports the Chicago Tribune, and charged with armed robbery.

After last weekend’s snowfall, two robbers who stuck up a West Side gas station with a .357 revolver and ran away with candy didn’t get very far ... for they, too, left footprints in the snow. Police officers responding to the 911 from a West 51st Street Citgo last Sunday morning followed the footprints to an apartment one block away.

There, they arrested Xavier Romero, 15, and Ricardo Moreno, 19. The 15-year-old went into the gas station with the gun for the holdup while the 19-year-old acted as a lookout, according to police. But the gas station clerk managed to hide under a counter behind a bullet-proof booth, and the teen-ager could only get away with candy, according to police.

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