Two 14-Year-Olds Admit Crime Spree

Two 14-year-old boys have confessed to a crime spree including the armed robbery of a Baldwin Park junior high teacher as she worked alone at the school and the theft of toys and snakes from area businesses, authorities said Wednesday.

One of the suspects told officers that “committing the crimes made him feel excited,” Baldwin Park Police Detective David Grall said.

The boys, students at Olive Junior High School, were caught during school hours hanging out at a shopping complex on Baldwin Park Boulevard, police said. Their names were withheld because they are minors.

The boys led police Monday to rocks and bushes in various locations in Baldwin Park, and to their homes, where they had stashed allegedly stolen booty.

Police recovered a four-foot-long python, a Japanese fighting sword, a pair of sais (martial-arts daggers), nunchakus (a martial-arts weapon of two wooden cylinders connected by a chain) and four pellet-shooting air pistols

The teacher was working alone in her classroom on a Sunday when someone pointed a handgun through an open window and ordered her to unlock the door. She complied and two young robbers entered and made off with $7 from her purse and $2 from a classroom cash box.

The alleged crime spree began with the theft of martial arts-weapons from a karate school, West Covina Police Detective Tom Garcia said. The two then allegedly took two pythons from a pet shop, Garcia said. The boys also reportedly broke into a church, twice took loose change from an antique store twice and took toy guns from a toy store, Grall said.