A pair of baby shoes left inside the getaway car led police to arrest a rap artist for last month’s $100k post office robbery. NBC New York’s Jonathan Dienst reports.
What to Know
- FBI agents and the NYPD responded to a Bronx post office shortly before it opened Sept. 6 after a 56-year-old postal worker reported someone hit her in the head with a firearm and ordered her to open the building
- The woman was attacked at the USPS location on Castle Hill Avenue around 7 a.m. She had been standing outside it when she was hit with the weapon, law enforcement sources said
- An armed man covering his face with a mask made off with $100,000 and an unknown amount of money orders, officials said
Officers arrested a man Thursday accused of pistol-whipping a postal worker and forcing her to open a safe inside a Bronx post office building in a brazen morning robbery of $100,000 earlier this month.
Elhorin Yisreal, 44, was taken into custody more than three weeks after surveillance cameras captured the Sept. 6 robbery and violent attack of the 56-year-old employee forced at gunpoint to open the USPS location on Castle Hill Avenue, federal prosecutors announced Friday.
Authorities accuse Yisreal of staking out the post office before jumping out of a vehicle as the woman arrived at the building around 7 a.m. She had walked to work with her husband when video shows the masked suspect slowly open the passenger side door of a white minivan and rush toward the couple.
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The victim's husband tried to rescue his wife but he quickly found himself staring down the barrel of a gun. Law enforcement sources said the armed robber struck the woman in the head and demanded access to a safe inside the building.
The gunman is believed to have stolen about $100,000 in cash, an unknown amount of money orders, and a machine used to print money orders. He ran off afterward.
“This was not a random robbery. We allege Yisreal sat waiting for the victims to arrive, forced his way in using a gun, and then stole a significant sum of money. He also stole a device used to print money orders," FBI Assistant Director Michael Driscoll said.
Local
It was not immediately clear how investigators tracked down Yisreal prior to his arrest Thursday. Contact information for his attorney was unknown.
The 44-year-old faces charges of robbery and brandishing a firearm.
"Whatever Yisreal's intent for that device may have been, he will get no use out of it in federal prison," Driscoll added.
