Woman, two boys accused of five armed robberies in Fresno, including one in Fashion Fair lot
A woman and two boys are accused in a spree of five armed robberies over a five-and-a-half hour span Sunday afternoon and evening in Fresno.
Fresno Police Department investigators in an update Monday said that between 3:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. Sunday, the suspects demanded money from their victims at gunpoint at locations that were all within about a 1.5-mile radius, including in the parking lot of the Fresno Fashion Fair shopping center on Shaw Avenue between Fresno and First streets.
An 18-year-old woman identified as Gisela Sampedro was arrested, along with two boys under the age of 18, in a traffic stop at about 9:30 p.m., about a half-hour after the last of the robberies.
The first of the robberies was reported at about 3:30 p.m. in the 3300 block of East Sierra Madre Avenue, south of Shaw Avenue and east of First Street.
That was followed at 4:25 p.m. by a robbery a short distance away in the parking lot of the nearby Fresno Fashion Fair mall in the 600 block of East Shaw Avenue. In that incident, the victim was able to get the license plate and a photo of the suspects and their car as they made their getaway.
Shortly before 7 p.m., a third robbery occurred in the 1900 block of East Shields Avenue, between Blackstone Avenue and Highway 41, where two victims were robbed at gunpoint.
The fourth incident was reported about 7:30 p.m. at Cedar and Princeton avenues, near McLane High School.
The last of the five robberies happened just before 9 p.m. in the 4600 block of North Fourth Street, north of Gettysburg Avenue and less than a half-mile from the scene of the first robbery.
Police said Sampedro acted as the getaway driver, while the two boys robbed the victims. The three were pulled over by police at Fresno Street and Gettysburg Avenue. Two BB guns – one resembling a Glock semiautomatic pistol and the other styled as a Colt semiautomatic pistol – and property recovered from the robberies were found inside their car, police reported.
Sampedro was booked into the Fresno County Jail at 3:30 a.m. Monday for suspicion of multiple charges of robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery, with bail set at $25,000 for each of eight charges.
The two boys were booked into the Fresno County Juvenile Justice campus.
This story was originally published June 13, 2022 at 1:23 PM.
