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Bizarre New Crime Trend: Adults Stealing Jewelry From Kids
Photo by lautsu via Flickr
No wonder kids thinks adults are weird: Sometimes they steal their jewelry! Two stories are making the news-rounds this morning. First, out of Montebello, 42-year-old Belinda Berumen has been arrested for stealing religious jewelry from first and second graders at her child's school. Apparently the six- to eight-year-old set have alluring Christian-themed bling, and Berumen allegedly resorted to good old fashioned trickery to get her hands on the goods.
Authorities say her method was to "offer to hold the jewelry while the children played or would tell them there was something wrong with the items and she would fix them," according to CBS2.
In Long Beach, two 19-year-old men and one 17-year-old girl have been arrested for yanking a necklace...right off a five-year-old's neck. The incident took place in December 2010, when the little girl "and her mother were walking in the 1100 block of East 10th Street when one suspect snatched a gold chain from the girl's throat and ran," according to the Daily Breeze. Authorities believe the trio may be behind other, similar strong-arm robberies in the area. It is not clear if those other "chain-snatching" cases involved kids their own size.
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