Syringe Bandit, Copycat Suspect Stage 2 More Holdups at Markets

He has struck a 7-Eleven, another mini-mart and Flooky’s Hot Dogs. On Thursday, the tall, blond man armed with a hypodermic syringe that he says contains AIDS-infected blood robbed a produce store. And now, police say, he has inspired a copycat.

As Los Angeles police intensified efforts to identify and track down the suspect Thursday--and police in Hawthorne investigated a robber using the same technique--representatives of AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center expressed concern that the robber’s exploitation of AIDS fears may trigger anger against innocent people.

So far, “we haven’t seen any backlash,” said Anthony Sprauve, a spokesman for APLA. “That’s what we’re afraid of.”

“I’m just waiting for it,” said David M. Smith, a spokesman for the community center, which frequently receives anti-gay calls and letters. “We’re all just sitting here hoping for this idiot to get caught.”

To AIDS activists, the unorthodox thieves may be the most wanted men in Los Angeles. A quick resolution, they say, would minimize unwarranted fears and perhaps settle whether the robbers are what they claim to be--men with AIDS using their own blood as weapons.

Police in the San Fernando Valley say they have increased patrols and distributed copies of a photograph from a videotape that shows the original bandit robbing a Northridge 7-Eleven. “It would be difficult to find a patrolman today who doesn’t have that photo in his car,” Los Angeles police spokesman Lt. John M. Dunkin said.

In the most recent of eight incidents since Monday, all of which have occurred in the San Fernando Valley, the man entered Louise Produce on Thursday, threatened a clerk and got $60 from the cash register.

As in most of his robberies, the mustachioed bandit showed an employee a syringe containing red fluid and said: “I have AIDS. This syringe is full of my blood. Give me all your money,” police said. The frightened woman allowed the man to reach into the cash register, police said.

Meanwhile, Hawthorne police reported Thursday that a robber who said he had AIDS showed a vial of red fluid at the Friendly Market on Yukon Avenue on Wednesday night. Police said the frightened clerk gave the man $20.

“It seems unlikely it’s the same person,” Hawthorne Police Lt. Jan Ogden said. “Because of the media coverage it would be easy to copycat this. Northridge is quite a distance from Hawthorne.”

The second robber was described as a white male, about 30 years old, with shoulder-length brown hair. There was a video camera in the store but it was turned off when the robbery occurred.

Police said that despite the novel choice of weapons the bandits are not particularly sophisticated.

“People who rob convenience stores are usually more desperate and less sophisticated,” said Detective Mel Arnold, a robbery investigator in the LAPD’S Van Nuys Division. “Most of our robbery murders that occur happen in convenience stores. Most of them know they’re not going to get a whole lot of money but they’ll get it relatively quickly.”

The booty has been relatively modest. The Valley bandit’s biggest holdup was a car he stole from a frightened motorist by brandishing the needle. After that, his biggest scores were eight cartons of cigarettes worth about $150 and the $60 in cash he took Thursday. He obtained nothing in several of the holdups; at Flooky’s, he left after the owner gave him $2.

Both police and AIDS activists expressed concerns about the media coverage given to the syringe-wielding bandit.

Dunkin suggested that media attention may have stymied investigators’ attempts to arrest the thief Wednesday after detectives, acting on a tip, traced the stolen car to the 8700 block of Canby Avenue in Northridge. They had hoped to capture the man when he returned to the car, Dunkin said, but the stakeout was revealed by visits from reporters, some in conspicuous TV news vans.

Smith, the spokesman for the gay community center, bemoaned reports that labeled the robber “the AIDS bandit.”

“Yesterday, it was a minute-by-minute bulletin on the radio. . . . I just think he’s trying to make a name for himself, whoever he is,” Smith said.

Times staff writer Marc Lacey contributed to this story.