When she’s not coloring or combing at “The Adam and Eve College of Cosmetology,” Kim Alfaro sometimes combs through surveillance video at her business.
It may have even helped investigators arrest two armed robbers this week.
“I was eating, and it was just right there in my face and I was watching these people running. The victim, the guy with the long hair he told me they just stole my iPhone,” Alfaro said.
She said the victim was fighting with an armed man. According to a police report, the victim met Kriston Williams and Derrick Henry about a block away at a pizza place. The victim was selling an iPhone on Facebook Marketplace, and they said Henry posed as a buyer. Minutes later Henry and Williams took off after snatching the merchandise, according to investigators.
“That’s when I called the cops,” Alfaro told 41 Action News.
Officers said whenever selling something online, you should always meet in a public place. That happened in this case. But as John Syme with the Independence Police Department explains, it’s not 100 percent foolproof.
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“You can do everything correct, everything properly and sometimes bad things are going to happen. The nature of doing a transaction with a stranger is dangerous,” he said.
To decrease the chances of this, officers say to meet in a more secure place, like a police station. Luckily in this case, the aftermath was caught on surveillance camera.
Williams and Henry are both charged with first degree robbery. The pizza place and security cameras that captured the duo minutes later, are both less than a mile from the Independence Police Department.
“In that situation, we were able to do some great police work, great response and get those people arrested quickly,” Syme told 41 Action News.
The quick response and Alfaro’s quick thinking may have prevented things from escalating even further.
“I’m super relieved that everybody’s safe,” Alfaro says. “It all happened really fast and the cops were on it.”
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Kevin Holmes can be reached at Kevin.Holmes@KSHB.com
