Vacaville Police responding to 911 calls reporting a purse snatching in Keating Park next to the California State Correctional Facility off Peabody Road on July 1 resulted in the arrests of two men on several charges that had nothing to do with the original robbery.
Police had responded to the 911 calls about 2:32 pm on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 1. Three males, two black and one white, reportedly had just grabbed a woman’s purse and cell phone. Witnesses said the robbers were in their 20s-30s. They ran along California Drive and disappeared around the corner onto a residential neighborhood along Mariposa Drive.
Soon after the manhunt began, an officer happened upon Dezmon Frazier, 21, of Vacaville. A police spokesman said Frazier was “well-known to the Vacaville Police Department.” This was due to several previous contacts with police and arrests. Frazier was notable for a 2011 incident when he and four other teens robbed the Fairfield Travis Dairy. The 70-year-old owner was assaulted during the robbery, and later died of a heart attack. One Frazier’s accomplices, James Alan Patrick Young, was charged with murder, while Frazier and the others accepted plea deals to felony involuntary manslaughter and second degree commercial burglary.
Police sought their suspects down Mariposa off California
The other suspect, Armoni Wiley, 22 and also from Vacaville, is a convict out on Post Release Community Supervision (PRCS) as part of California’s prison overcrowding. Records show that he was arrested in 2011 on charges of attempted murder, domestic violence, false imprisonment, and vandalism.
The officers searched for weapons on Frazier’s person and uncovered a concealed, loaded Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol not registered to him. Frazier was also arrested for committing that felony while out on bail for a previous crime. The officers also contacted the Solano Probation Department and learned that Wiley had not been meeting his probation officer, per terms of his sentence for a previous crime.
Both suspects were booked into Solano County Jail. The three strongarm robbery suspects, however, apparently eluded capture.
