Berkeley police arrested an Oakland man accused of stealing more than $400 in, or 44 pints of, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
The arrest came on Wednesday, police said, after a series of events that began when two men entered an Andronico’s Market on Solano Avenue, and an employee recognized one of them from a previous robbery attempt.
When employees blocked the men from leaving the store, police said, the suspects threatened one worker with a Taser or stun gun, then fled by car.
Then, less than 30 minutes later, police said, the same two suspects stepped into another Andronico’s Market — this one on Shattuck Avenue — and “concealed a large quantity of ice cream” in bags and tried to leave without paying. When an employee blocked their exit, one of the suspects threatened that employee with a stun gun while the other suspect punched the employee, police said. Again, the suspects fled by car.
Berkeley police used license plate-reading technology to find the suspects’ vehicle in West Oakland. When officers approached the vehicle, one suspect fled on foot and was captured after a chase, police said.
Police said they arrested a 34-year-old Kevin Richard. It’s unclear what happened to the second suspect. But the Berkeley Scanner reported that police recovered the missing ice cream in the car — $400 worth of Ben & Jerry’s — and that officers linked the suspect to a previous Andronico’s ice cream robbery six days earlier.
“That’s absolutely true, and it actually happens quite often,” said Adronico’s employee Nicholas Del Bosco.
“It’s not about flavor, just about profit,” Del Bosco said, adding that grocery thieves typically sell what they take almost immediately.
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