EL TORO : 2 Arrested After Armed Crime Spree

Orange County sheriff’s deputies arrested two Huntington Beach men Thursday night in connection with a crime spree that began with a Newport Beach residential burglary and included a series of holdups in El Toro.

John Benedict Eizak, 36, and James Wayne Simmons, 25, were taken into custody at 8:30 p.m. by deputies who discovered them sitting in a car that had been reported stolen from Huntington Beach that morning, Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Richard J. Olson said.

The two were being held at Orange County Jail on $50,000 bail, Olson said, and face arraignment Monday in South County Municipal Court on armed robbery, grand theft auto and burglary charges.

Olson said the suspects were caught after a string of reports that two men were staging armed robberies along El Toro Road.

Deputies were tipped off when, shortly before 8:30 p.m., they received a call from a man who was robbed while walking into a restaurant in the Saddleback Plaza at the intersection of El Toro Road and Rockfield Boulevard.

The suspects, flashing a handgun, took the victim’s wallet, which contained $26, and fled the scene in a 1990 Ford Thunderbird, Olson said.

A few minutes later, Olson said, a 41-year-old Mission Viejo man reported an attempted robbery in a commercial parking lot. The suspects sped away in the Thunderbird when the victim saw the handgun and began yelling.

Next, a 21-year-old man parking his car in front of the River Oaks apartment complex reported being held up by two men, who took $5, a payroll check and a number of credit cards, Olson said.

As the suspects drove off, the victim copied down the license plate number, and gave the number to a deputy he flagged down. Olson said the stolen Thunderbird was spotted a few minutes later in a bank parking lot.

A search of the car turned up an undisclosed amount of jewelry as well as several furs and cameras believed to have been taken in a residential burglary in Newport Beach on Thursday morning, Olson said.

A knife and a plastic toy cap gun also were found in the car, Olson said.