Police hunting Pimlico gang swoop on suspect

Led away: the suspect early today
13 April 2012

Police today swooped on one of the final alleged members of a knife-wielding gang suspected of preying on lone women in central London.

In a dawn raid detectives seized a 32-year-old man on suspicion of a violent robbery on a woman in Belgravia last month. In the attack the woman had a pair of £100,000 earrings pulled from her ears moments after she had stepped from her Bentley car in Eaton Place.

Police suspect there are links to a series of eight attacks on women walking home alone in Pimlico in November and last month.

The robbers stole jewellery and watches, sometimes at knifepoint - leading residents to organise night-time patrols to guard the streets.

Officers from Westminster Crime Squad burst into the suspect's one-bedroom flat on the third floor of a council block in Notting Hill early today. Using a steel battering ram, they smashed their way inside, shouting "police, police, police".

Sounds of a struggle could be heard before the suspect was led away in handcuffs - after first asking one officer to look after his pet cat, Angel.

In a simultaneous raid on a second suspect in Ashmore Road, Queen's Park, police were warned the man had a history of violence and once kept an axe behind his door. There was also intelligence he had an samurai sword.

The suspect was not at home but in three lock-up garages nearby they found a suspected stolen convertible Mini which had been stripped of its licence plates and two other suspected stolen cars. Detectives believe they were used in the robberies.

Detective Superintendent Penny Banham said : "These arrests show we are determined to take action against suspects committing crime in Westminster. Since we started this operation we have carried out nine arrests and we have seen an end to the offences in Pimlico."

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