3 in custody for home invasion on Sherman Oaks street that has been targeted multiple times
SHERMAN OAKS, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- At least three people are in custody after a harrowing home invasion in a San Fernando Valley neighborhood that residents say has been targeted by burglars multiple times in recent weeks.
Residents of Greenleaf Street in Sherman Oaks say there have been at least four or five incidents in the area in the last two weeks.
Monday night, investigators were already in the area when they got the call about a home invasion, with several masked and armed suspects breaking into a house while only the nanny was home, taking a shower.
"Officers who were already in the area surveilling, patrolling the area, were able to locate the vehicle," said LAPD Lt. Elpidio Orozco. "They followed the vehicle to a location in Compton."
AIR7 was overhead as the suspects jumped out of the car. One suspect was seen running on foot in neighborhoods and through a school property, even sprinting away from a plainclothes officer who tried to hold him at gunpoint on the other side of a chain-link fence.
Eventually three people were arrested and police say all three were already on supervised release for prior offenses. The suspects were identified as Isaiah Rankins, 22; Juan Carlos Gonzalez, 21; and Dion Hill, 24. All three were booked for robbery home invasion and bail was set at $175,000 each, including enhancements for prior burglaries and supervised probation for firearm possession.
Investigators later obtained a warrant and searched multiple locations in Compton and South Los Angeles, and recovered property that was believed to have been stolen during Monday's burglary.
On Tuesday, surveillance video captured another crew hitting the same Sherman Oaks neighborhood, just a block away from the home targeted Monday night.
Diana Makhtesyan and her family have been left shaken after their home was broken into in the afternoon for the second time in three months. She shared video with Eyewitness News showing a pair of burglars hopping the fence of the home and breaking in.
Twenty minutes later, they take off with purses and shoes. It would have been more, but Makhtesyan says they were pretty much cleaned out back in May.
Neighbors say they have become frightened by the brazen burglaries in their community.
Another burglary was reported in Sherman Oaks Monday night, in a neighborhood near the Fashion Square mall. It wasn't immediately clear if it was connected to the Greenleaf break-in.
"This is the highest level of brazen crime I've ever seen in my entire life," said Saurabh Jain, who lives in the Greenleaf neighborhood. "And I grew up in Queens, New York."
Jain says his home was burglarized last month, with cash and property stolen. There have been four or five such incidents on Greenleaf, he says.
"My wife is definitely scared. Her sense of safety and being violated in this way has changed her thought process on a daily basis. What she thinks about, how she chooses to do certain activities. It's all changing."
