3 Arrested in April Home-Invasion Robbery

A team of 40 law enforcement officers searched eight homes Friday morning and arrested three people on suspicion of robbing a Yorba Linda family of $40,000 in cash, jewels and weapons during an April 25 home invasion, authorities said.

Police said they also seized several handguns and retrieved some of the stolen jewelry while searching six apartments and two houses on Cypress and La Jolla streets.

“It’s been a lot of hard work, and it was worthwhile,” Brea Police Detective Terry Fincher said about the five-week investigation. “But it’s only the beginning.”

Fincher said investigators are searching for other suspects in the robbery.

Apart from confiscating jewelry, weapons and household items from some of the homes, Fincher said, police armed with warrants detained six people but released three of them a few hours later. But an adult and two juveniles were booked on suspicion of armed robbery.

Bang Chu Do, 18, of Placentia was being held at the Orange County Jail in Santa Ana in lieu of $10,000 bail. The two juveniles were released to the custody of their parents, Brea Police Detective Grant Gulickson said.

Fincher said the Brea Police Department, which contracts to provide service to Yorba Linda, began investigating the robbery when a frantic woman called 911 in April to report that five or six armed men had forced their way into her Thicket Lane home.

The men tied up two women, including the caller, while an 8-month-old infant wailed nearby, police said. No one was injured in the incident, which police said fit the pattern of home invasions by Asian gangs targeting Asian victims.

Fincher said La Habra, Anaheim and Placentia police provided help in executing the warrants Friday, along with the county district attorney’s office.

“We needed the help,” Fincher said. “We just could not do it ourselves because of the magnitude of the operation.”

Fincher said police interviewed people “who were either involved in the robbery or who were members of their gang.”

Both Fincher and Gulickson declined to specify how many firearms were seized from the residences, saying investigators were still tallying the seized items.

Times staff writer James M. Gomez contributed to this report.