Young Robbery Suspects Return Home to Find Police Waiting

Los Angeles police did not have far to go to arrest three teen-agers suspected of a string of armed robberies at San Fernando Valley supermarkets.

After the latest two robberies Monday night, officers waited patiently for them in front of one suspect’s Canoga Park house. When the three pulled up after what they apparently had thought was a successful getaway, officers arrested them, seizing masks, loaded guns, the stores’ money, and even a stolen pizza, police said.

Detective Robert Johansen said the Monday night caper ended with quick arrests because undercover officers, acting on an anonymous tip, had been watching the house near Roscoe Boulevard and Owensmouth Street earlier but had left to follow a resident who had driven away.

When the officers heard police radio reports of the robberies and descriptions of two men and a woman being sought, they immediately realized that the robbers might be other residents and visitors they had seen at the house in recent days and went back, Johansen said.

“They were watching one man and so they knew he wasn’t involved” in Monday evening’s robberies, Johansen said. “So they went back to the house to wait for the others.”

Arrested at 11:45 p.m. were D.J. Cekic, 19, who lives in the house, Dietrich O’Neal, 19, of Canoga Park and a 17-year-old Canoga Park girl.

Johansen said he would ask prosecutors to charge the three with robberies Monday evening of an Alpha Beta store in Calabasas, a Pavilions store in West Hills, and a pizza deliveryman who had his money, pizza and car taken shortly before the store robberies.

On Tuesday, after police evaluated evidence gathered from the three arrests, another 17-year-old Canoga Park girl and a boy, 16, who lived at the house with Cekic, were arrested on suspicion of taking part in earlier robberies, Johansen said. The boy was the person police had followed Monday night, he said.

The detective said that since April 18 there have been seven supermarket robberies in the West Valley, including two in which shots were fired, but no one was injured, he said.

As with the Monday night robberies, on two previous occasions, the robbers’ method included ordering a pizza delivered to an address on a dark street in the Canoga Park area, Johansen said. When the deliveryman arrived, he was robbed and his car was taken to be used as the getaway vehicle in two supermarket robberies.

During the store robberies, the bandits ordered customers and employees to the ground and rifled cash registers, police said. In most cases the robbers stole about $500, but in one robbery they escaped with nearly $5,000.

Police identified the house where Cekic and the 16-year-old boy live through anonymous tipsters, Johansen said. But because numerous people lived at the house or visited frequently, undercover officers focused on the 16-year-old because he owned the only car at the house. On Monday night, when he left in the car, officers followed him, but the boy committed no crime.

Meantime, Cekic was apparently picked up by the other two suspects in another car after the officers had left, Johansen said.