Dallas

Police Questioning Suspect in String of Dallas Muggings

Police are questioning a man allegedly connected to a string of muggings that have targeted women in north Dallas.

Over the course of two days, four women were mugged while walking alone in area parking lots. Three of those crimes happened within just hours of each other.

Sarah Beth Wilste said she holds her son a little tighter now, five days after she was mugged in the Target parking lot off Haskell Road and Central Expressway.

“I wasn’t paying attention, so I guess I was an easy target,” said Wilste.

The young mother said she had just put her nine-month-old in his car seat and was loading the stroller in the truck, when she felt someone approach from behind and cut her purse strap.

“He cut it in the back and yanked it away,” said Wilste. “So I just felt it yanking off my shoulder.”

Stunned, the young mother chased after the robber.

“I just had this feeling, ‘I couldn’t lose my grocery money for the next month.’ I chased after him, but he jumped in the car and got away before I could even see his face,” Wilste said.

Wilste said Target security workers told her cameras showed the robber cruising the parking lot for 10 minutes before he settled on the young mom.

Her purse had everything inside, including her keys, wallet, cash and her phone containing the first nine months of her son’s life caught on camera.

“I had a sonogram picture of him that I lost, and it’s just sad to lose all the irreplaceable things,” she said.

Those images are all she wants back, along with the feeling of being safe again next time she goes out with her son.

“I worry about getting robbed when I’m traveling, or somewhere not at home. But when you’re five minutes from home you don’t think you’re going to get mugged in a parking lot,” she said.

A few hours later, an 82-year-old woman would be attacked in the parking lot of the Tom Thumb off Northwest Highway and Central Expressway, and then a woman was mugged in a shopping center off Alpha Road near the Galleria.

Police say they are questioning a suspect to see if he is linked to those crimes and a fourth that occurred a day before off Webb Chapel and Northwest Highway.

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