Two suspects, one wielding a six-inch pocket knife, robbed a Ross Dress for Less in West Los Angeles late Friday night before fleeing with stolen merchandise, authorities said. The pair walked into the store on the 8900 block of Venice Boulevard around 10:25 p.m. and were gone before officers arrived, though police reached the scene within five minutes.
According to MyNewsLA.com, the male suspect wore a ski mask along with a gray, brown and green flannel shirt, while the female suspect was dressed in a black hat and a black dress, according to LAPD. The two were armed with the pocket knife, per an LAPD spokesperson, and left the premises with stolen goods before officers could catch up to them. No injuries were reported, according to the outlet's report.
A Familiar Address for Retail Crime
This is not the first time this exact Ross location has drawn police attention. In August 2023, two men stole merchandise from the same store in front of employees, an incident that led the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office to file organized retail theft and grand theft charges, according to CBS News. That earlier case helped prompt the LAPD's Commercial Crimes Division to launch an Organized Retail Crime Task Force later that month, aimed specifically at coordinated retail hits and commercial robberies across the city.
The store sits inside the Ivy Station commercial complex near the border of West Los Angeles and Culver City, adjacent to the Metro E Line's Culver City station, according to Patch. The transit-adjacent location places it along a stretch of Venice Boulevard that has seen other recent public safety incidents, including a hit-and-run involving a bicyclist earlier this month.
What Suspects Could Face Under State Law
Taking property from a business through force or fear is prosecuted in California as second-degree robbery under Penal Code sections 211 and 212.5, a felony carrying a state prison sentence of two, three, or five years, according to the Palmdale Criminal Defense Law Firm. Because the suspects allegedly used a knife during the robbery, they could also face a mandatory, consecutive one-year sentence enhancement under Penal Code section 12022(b)(1), which applies when someone personally uses a dangerous or deadly weapon while committing a felony, per the Shouse California Law Group.
The case also lands amid a period of aggressive local enforcement against repeat retail theft. California voters passed Proposition 36 in November 2024, letting prosecutors file felony petty theft charges under Penal Code section 666.1 against shoplifters with two or more prior theft convictions, regardless of how much merchandise was stolen, as CalMatters reported. Between December 2024 and May 2025, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office filed more than 1,000 Proposition 36 felony theft charges against repeat offenders across the county.
A Broader Pattern Across Southern California
Statewide, the California Highway Patrol's Organized Retail Crime Task Force conducted more than 4,500 investigations, made over 5,100 arrests, and recovered 1.6 million stolen items worth over $74.6 million between 2019 and mid-2026, according to the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom. Hoodline has previously reported on the task force's local hauls, and Ross stores in particular have been targeted before, including an alleged family-run theft ring broken up in Ventura County in 2024.
Citywide, commercial robberies like Friday's remain part of a larger crime picture even as overall violence trends downward. The LAPD's 2025 Crime Data Report, released in February, showed homicides fell 19 percent last year to their lowest level since 1966, though the department still logged 7,213 total robberies across Los Angeles during the year. In its most recent SEC filing, Ross Stores, Inc. acknowledged that inventory shrinkage tied to organized retail crime and professional theft remains an ongoing risk to operations and store safety across its more than 2,000 discount locations nationwide.
It remains unclear how much merchandise the two suspects made off with Friday night, whether store surveillance video captured their faces, or whether investigators are linking the robbery to other recent incidents in West Los Angeles. LAPD has not announced any arrests in the case.
