Crime Watch

Suspect captured after robbery

Lynbrook man arrested for $1,900 heist in Valley Stream

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A Lynbrook police detective arrested a Lynbrook man on Jan. 27 for holding up the Valero gas station on Sunrise Highway minutes earlier.

According to Lynbrook police, Andrew Alonge, 26, entered the gas station, at 192 E. Sunrise Highway, around 7 p.m., brandished what appeared to be a black semiautomatic handgun and pointed it at the stomach of a male clerk, saying “Give me all the money — I’m not stupid!” The victim placed approximately $100 and a cell phone in a black plastic bag that Alonge was holding, police said.

Alonge then allegedly turned to a second male clerk standing behind the counter and demanded money, instructing him to “pick up the drawer” in the cash register. The clerk complied and Alonge left the store, fleeing east on Sunrise Highway, police said.

Detective Christopher Skartsiaris, of the Lynbrook Police Department, heard a notification about the robbery and responded to the area. He spotted Alonge at 7:09 p.m. at the corner of Scranton Avenue and High Street — two and a half blocks from the gas station and just across the Lynbrook border — and approached him. Skartsiaris asked Alonge what he was doing, and Alonge replied, “I’m not doing nothing — you can’t stop me.”

Alonge turned to run away, police said, but Skartsiaris brought him to the ground and handcuffed him. A Nassau County police officer arrived on the scene and helped Skartsiaris take Alonge into custody.

Proceeds from the robbery and a black BB gun fitting the description of the gun used in the robbery were recovered.

Alonge was charged with second-degree robbery and arraigned on Jan. 28 at First District Court in Hempstead.

He has an arrest record for robbery going back to 2009, as reported in the Herald. He was arrested in September 2009, at age 19, for using a black BB gun to rob the Kim Wong Chinese Kitchen, at 529 W. Merrick Road in Valley Stream, with two co-defendants. Alonge was also charged with two prior robberies, one a month earlier at a Lynbrook gas station, in which a knife was used, and another at a USA gas station at 562 W. Merrick Road in Valley Stream, the day before his arrest. He was charged with three counts of first-degree robbery.

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