GPS system leads to speedy arrests

[Disco]

Leave it to a band of low-tech armed robbers to rent a getaway car with a global positioning system.

Suffice it to say, the car wasn't hard to find.

It all began Tuesday evening at the Pizza Hut restaurant at West Broad Street and Davis Avenue near the northeast edge of Richmond's Fan District.

Police said witnesses observed four young men emerge from a gold-colored Ford Crown Victoria parked in the rear of the parking lot behind the restaurant.

After loitering in the back lot for several minutes, the men advanced on the eatery, with at least two of them donning ski masks and one carrying a gun, witnesses told police.

Maj. David McCoy said the men demanded money from the cash register and also robbed the store manager, leaving moments later with roughly $300.

Witnesses observed the men get into the car and drive off, and recorded the license plate of the Ford.

The information was provided to police, who learned the vehicle was registered to a rental-car agency just blocks from the Pizza Hut.

McCoy said the owner of the rental agency was able to track his vehicles through their GPS systems, and pinpointed the Ford a short distance away, near Chamberlayne Avenue and Lombardy Street.

As police mobilized, the rental-agency owner was also able to send a signal to disable the vehicle, stranding the occupants.

Within minutes, police arrested three men, including 18-year-old Randolph Lamont Pervall of the 4100 block of North Avenue.

McCoy said Pervall was a student at John Marshall High School. Two juveniles also were arrested, one another Marshall student and the other a student at Boushall Middle School. Police were still searching last night for a fourth suspect.

One of the juveniles is also suspected in a recent robbery of a 7-Eleven store in South Richmond, McCoy said.

Police recovered a ski mask, a .32-caliber handgun and most of the cash believed to have been stolen from the Pizza Hut, said Sgt. Tim Wyatt, supervisor of detectives in the 3rd Precinct's Focus Mission Team.

No one was injured in the robbery, solved by Detectives Reuben Albright and Dexter Gadson in about the same amount of time it takes to have a pizza delivered.