Robbers at Large After Holdups at Mini-Mall, Bank

One man was arrested in a robbery and attempted murder in Stanton on Friday, but his two accomplices, who fled authorities, remained at large late Saturday, police said.

In an unrelated incident in Huntington Beach on Friday, a robber ambushed a man as he was making a bank deposit and fled with an unknown amount of cash.

The first of the robberies occurred about 8:50 p.m. in Stanton. Three men in a white Hyundai pulled up to three different teenagers in the parking lot of a mini-mall at 10444 Dale Avenue and demanded money, said Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Richard Paddock.

When the victims fled without handing over any money, one of the men in the Hyundai shot at them with a sawed-off shotgun, Paddock said. No one was hurt in the shooting, he said.

The Hyundai then left the parking lot and robbed a 13-year-old of his mountain bike, he said. A sheriff’s patrol deputy, who spotted the Hyundai, stopped the car, but two of the suspects fled, he said. The driver, Julio Duarte, 22, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and robbery, Paddock said. A semiautomatic rifle and the bicycle were found in the car, he said.

About two hours later in Huntington Beach, a man hiding in the bushes surprised the 26-year-old assistant manager of a photography business as he made his night deposit at the Wells Fargo at 6952 Bolsa Avenue, said Sgt. R.K. Miller.

The robber, described as a 6-foot-4-inch, 250-pound black man with a mustache and full beard, fled with an unknown amount of cash and checks in a late 1980s, primer gray Oldsmobile Cutlass, Miller said. He was wearing a black baseball cap, suede jacket and jeans.