Police Investigate String of Armed Robberies in Boston Area

Cambridge Police are investigating two armed robberies that occurred early Friday morning near Harvard Square.

According to a community advisory notice issued Friday by Harvard University Police Department spokesperson Steven G. Catalano, the robberies occurred within 15 minutes of each other, at about 3 and 3:15 a.m. The victim in the second incident, an unnamed male Harvard Summer School student, reported that he was robbed at gunpoint on Arrow Street, near Bow Street and that two male assailants struck him with their handguns in the face and head.

According to Cambridge Police Department spokesperson Jeremy Warnick, the victim is 25 years old.

The earlier incident took place on Franklin Street and involved a female victim not affiliated with Harvard and “most likely the same offenders,” Catalano wrote in the advisory message. Warnick said similar armed robberies also occurred in the Brookline and Brighton areas Friday morning at “very close timeframes.”

“We’re thinking that there’s some potential that they may be related,” Warnick said. Both cases involved two black male assailants and a “dark, potentially black sedan” with a driver, he said.

Warnick added that “in each case guns were used—or at least presented.”

Though robbery is a seasonal crime more common in the higher traffic of warmer months, armed robberies in the Cambridge and Boston area are “pretty rare incident[s],” according to Warnick. Moreover, city-wide street robberies are at historic lows, Warnick noted. Only 52 robberies occurred in Cambridge last year, compared to a five-year average of 111.

Catalano could not be reached for further comment.

—Staff writer Luca F. Schroeder can be reached at luca.schroeder@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @lucaschroeder.