12-year-old arrested for violent crime spree - New York Post

Police believe they have halted a one-boy crime wave in southern Brooklyn.

A 12-year-old suspect is in custody in connection with several gunpoint robberies, as well as of punching, beating and trying to set fire to an 80-year-old grandmother in Gravesend.

The young terror’s criminal career may go back to last year, a law enforcement source told The Post. The kid matches the description of the gunslinger in multiple year-old robberies in Coney Island and Bath Beach, the source said.

But he was only caught this week, after what cops believe to be his latest of three very violent encounters with an elderly neighbor.

In the latest of those encounters, the woman was cleaning outside the front of her two-story, brick home on West 7th Street near 86th Street, at around 5 p.m. Saturday.

The boy confronted her, according to the source. But the woman does not understand English, and could not respond to him, the source said.

The boy then lashed out, punching the right side of her face so hard, she wound up with a black eye — then non-chalantly walked away.

The grandson heard his grandmother’s screaming, but could not catch the fleet-footed menace, and called police.

Responding officers were told of two prior assaults on the same elderly lady in recent weeks. In the first instance, the same kid hit her on her head with a metal rod; on the second, he attempted to set fire to her jacket with a lighter, the source said.

It was in investigating these attacks that police realized the boy’s alleged prior history. Canvassing the neighborhood, police interviewed workers at a nearby Chinese restaurant, who were able to show them surveillance video of the kid running off with $20 from their tip jar.

The boy in that video matched the suspect in the attack on the old woman — and the yet-apprehended suspect in several gunpoint robberies in Coney Island and Bath Beach from a year ago.

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