Police Investigate Purse Snatchings

Police are investigating three purse snatchings that have have occurred in the same part of midtown Ventura since June.

Because the crimes were close in time and location, investigators think they might be related, even though descriptions of the suspects do not match, Ventura Police Lt. Carl Handy said. No arrests have been made.

Handy said each theft involved two robbers and was committed near a bank or a grocery store on Borchard Drive between Ocean Avenue and Main Street. Each robbery occurred between 1 and 4 p.m., and the victims were women over 55, Handy said.

On Monday, a woman walking in the northeast corner of the Borchard Center parking lot in the 2700 block of Thompson Boulevard had her purse snatched by a woman who ran to a getaway car driven by another woman, Handy said.

On June 29, another woman was robbed of her handbag as she walked to her car in the same location. The purse snatcher and getaway driver were women, Handy said. And on June 3, a woman pulling into a parking space at a bank next to the shopping center was helped out of her car by two men who grabbed her purse and fled.