Three armed robberies on the same stretch of South Harvard Avenue in Roseland have Chicago police warning residents about a pattern tied to social media meetups gone wrong. The incidents, spanning late summer into this week, each followed the same setup: a victim agreed to meet someone through an app, only to be confronted at gunpoint.
Chicago police issued a community alert about the string of robberies on the 9200 block of South Harvard Avenue, according to WGN-TV. The station reports robberies occurred on the block at 5:30 a.m. on September 12, at 2:30 p.m. on October 18, and at 7:30 p.m. this past Tuesday, October 27. In each case, police said, the robbery victims had agreed to meet the offender via a social media app before he demanded their belongings at gunpoint and fled in an unknown direction once they complied.
Police described the suspect as a skinny Black male with a light complexion, standing between 5 feet 8 inches and 6 feet 2 inches tall, wearing all-black clothing and a mask, per the same account relayed by WGN-TV. Anyone with information is asked to call Area Two detectives at 312-747-8273 or submit an anonymous tip at CPDTIP.com using reference number P26-2-018, the station reports.
A Wider Pattern Across Roseland and Washington Heights
The Harvard Avenue cluster comes as the Chicago Police Department had already issued a community alert on October 6 covering recent armed robberies across the Roseland and Washington Heights neighborhoods. Other reported Roseland-area street robberies have also surfaced this month: Patch reported that two separate incidents on October 16 and October 19 involved a man armed with a gun who approached victims, demanded their phones, and forced them to change their passwords before fleeing on foot, according to a Patch report citing a separate CPD alert.
Other South Side neighborhoods have faced similar alerts in recent months, Hoodline has previously reported. In Grand Crossing, police released an alert about suspects using Facebook Marketplace and other social media apps to lure victims into armed robberies, according to ABC7 Chicago. That outlet reported robberies on the 400 block of West 76th Street on September 17 and September 29, and on the 7500 block of South Eggleston Avenue on October 7, with victims robbed at gunpoint after arriving at agreed-upon meeting spots.
Months of Social-Media-Linked Robberies on the South Side
Chicago police have also warned that armed robbers targeted people leaving parties at least nine times since February across Chatham, Grand Crossing and Auburn Gresham, with five of those robberies happening on the same block of the 7900 block of South Wabash Avenue, according to CWBChicago. Police have not said whether the same person is responsible for all of the reported incidents in that pattern.
No arrest, charge or court information has been provided for any of the Harvard Avenue incidents, and the suspect descriptions circulating across the various Roseland-area alerts have not been reconciled into a single account. For now, investigators are relying on the public: anyone who recognizes the suspect or has information about the robberies is urged to contact Area Two detectives or submit a tip online.
