A police hunt for a man suspected of up to 18 armed robberies in which he marched many victims at gunpoint to withdraw money from banking machines ended early Tuesday after officers cornered the suspect in an Oakland parking garage and used a Taser to subdue him.
Brandon Seabreeze, 22, whose last known address was a halfway house in Braddock, has been charged by Pittsburgh police with four counts of robbery for allegedly robbing four people late Monday and early Tuesday with a 9 mm handgun. Police apprehended Seabreeze just after 1 a.m. yesterday in the garage following a frantic foot chase.
At the time of his arrest, Seabreeze, 22, was wanted by authorities for a parole violation relating to a sentence issued on May 13, 2003, for a burglary conviction in Allegheny County, said LeAnn Halfast, a spokeswomen for the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole.
Seabreeze was being held in the Allegheny County Jail.
Robbery detectives are working to link Seabreeze to at least 14 other robberies that occurred in Downtown, Shadyside and Oakland starting Jan. 19. The victims had been walking alone, police said. The robber, wearing a ski mask, brandished a handgun and then walked most of them to automatic banking machines where he forced them to withdraw money, police said. In other cases, the robber demanded purses or wallets.
Police said they don't know how much money was taken from all the victims.
Several victims were slightly injured during the hold-ups, suffering scrapes and bruises when they were thrown to the pavement, police said.
At the time of his arrest, Seabreeze allegedly possessed $1,300 in cash and a small amount of marijuana in his pockets, said Sgt. Aaron Beatty, head of the city police robbery squad. Beatty said police also recovered a 9mm handgun and a black ski mask from Seabreeze.
"We were working round the clock to catch this guy, and we did," Beatty said.
After his arrest, Seabreeze told detectives he was essentially homeless, staying part-time in a half-way house on George Street in Braddock, police said. Investigators have been unable to locate family members and are unsure of his hometown. Seabreeze has numerous arrests on theft, receiving stolen property and access-device fraud charges, according to police and court records.
Police allege that Seabreeze began Monday night's spree by robbing a victim at the corner of Maryland and Elmer streets in Shadyside at 9:50 p.m. Police accuse him of accosting a second victim an hour later on the 300 block of South Craig Avenue in Oakland and making off with $200. Just after midnight, he allegedly struck again on the 3800 block of Bates Street before robbing a fourth and final victim at 12:08 a.m. on the 3500 block of Forbes Avenue, police said.
Police from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh joined city police in a manhunt, with city police Sgt. Raymond Hutton spotting the suspect entering the parking garage on foot on Craft Avenue.
A little after 1 a.m., Seabreeze was cornered in the garage, refusing officers' demands to drop his gun. One officer then tackled Seabreeze, and as he resisted, another fired an electrical charge from a Taser gun into the struggling suspect. After he was handcuffed, four victims identified him as the man who robbed them, police said.
