Series of Violent Robberies Leads to Arrests

Doris Sorto was getting ready to close her store when a man walked in, pulled out a gun and held it to her neck. He forced her to the floor and told her in Spanish, “Don’t look at my face.” The robber and his two companions took at least $32,000 before fleeing.

Now four suspects have been accused in federal court of committing the Aug. 22, 2010 robbery of Sorto’s store, in Dale City, and three others. They are also charged with plotting to commit armed robbery of a Pennsylvania bank and a D.C. drug dealer—a plan that turned out to be a sting operation by law enforcement.

Court documents describe the group as ruthlessly violent criminals, using force and weapons to threaten people, including children, and planning to take hostages in a bank robbery and shoot them one-by-one if necessary.

Edgar Geovani Perez-Suniga, Vahelo Alay Escobar, Serfido Trinidad Perez Florian and Estanislao Ramos Perez are accused in the Eastern Virginia U.S. District Court of committing armed robbery and conspiring to commit armed robbery. According to an affidavit, the group was responsible for a series of robberies, including three in Dale City and one in Falls Church.

Just over a month after the robbery at La Despensa Latina, on Sep. 26, another Latino grocery store in Dale City, , was held up by two Hispanic men. One of the men pointed a handgun with a red laser sight at the chest of a child before the store’s owner stepped in front of the child. The robbers took over $12,000 before fleeing.

The gang then allegedly committed two robberies in February 2011. Three Hispanic men held up Steven’s Shop in Falls Church on Feb. 7. The robbers held an employee at gunpoint and took $40,000 from the store’s safe, spraying the employee with pepper spray and then running away.

On Feb. 11, two Hispanic men held up the Dollar City Plus store in Foulger Square in the Dale City area. One of the culprits held a gun to the head of an employee and forced the employee to open the register. In that case, the robbers got away with $600.

In March, undercover law enforcement officers met with the group and pretended to help them plot an armed robbery of the Wachovia Bank in Horsham, Pa. The officers met with the group several times from March 3 through March 9.

The group asked the officers to help them by getting weapons, bulletproof vests, eight vehicles and a female driver for the robbery. On the afternoon of March 9, officers arrested the four men named and two others.

That evening, a section of the Birchdale neighborhood in Dale City was , SWAT teams, armored vehicles and snipers. The agents stormed two homes on Bremerton Drive, kicking in the doors and using flash-bang grenades. According to the families who live in the homes, people renting rooms in both houses were taken.

The FBI has indicated that the raids were related to the armed robbery charges, but has so far declined to elaborate on the connection.

The owner of one of the houses, who did not wish to be named for this story, said that his whole family, including his 13-year-old daughter, had been handcuffed and held for several hours. He said officers told him they were after one man, about 5 feet tall, whom they called “Geovani.” The owner said he believed this Geovani was the former boyfriend of one of his renters.

In the first Dale City robbery, at La Despensa Latina, the robbers walked out of the store to a green Nissan Xterra SUV. Doris Sorto’s husband, who co-owns the store with Sorto, came out of the next-door restaurant El Rinconcito Latino that the couple also own. He yelled at the robbers and told a waitress to get his gun. One of the robbers pointed a gun at him and said, “You’re going to die.” Then the robbers sped off in the Xterra.

After the arrests, investigators said they learned that one of the suspects, Edgar Geovani Perez-Suniga, regularly drove a green Xterra fitting the description of the one used in the robbery of La Despensa Latina. Investigators also said that when Perez-Suniga was arrested, he was carrying a Glock semi-automatic pistol with a red-dot laser sighting system, like the gun used in the robbery of La Azteca Latina. 

Another one of the suspects, Serfido Trinidad Perez Florian, positively identified himself as one of the subjects in surveillance footage taken from the robbery of La Azteca Latina. Investigators said that a fingerprint taken after the robbery of Steven’s Shop in Falls Church matched another suspect, Vahelo Alay Escobar.

The four suspects named in the affidavit and two others, Luis Lopez and Jose Martin Ruiz-Cacho, were indicted in the District of Columbia U.S. District Court on March 17. Joseph Conte, the court-appointed attorney for Florian, said that the D.C. District court plans to dismiss the charges there and wrap everything into one case in the Virginia Eastern U.S. District Court in Alexandria.