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A Sunnyvale teen was mugged and robbed March 24, after being set up by a girl he thought was his friend, police said.

The 14-year-old victim met up with the 15-year-old teenage girl at the former Slater Elementary School campus at about 9 p.m., Mountain View police spokeswoman Liz Wylie said. The two were to walk to the girl’s home and hang out.

They walked down Gladys Avenue and turned into a condominium complex at 221 Gladys Ave., Wylie said. However, the hangout session was not to be, as the girl didn’t actually live in that particular complex.

Instead, the two teens were approached by two teenage boys, wearing all black, Wylie said. The two teens threw the 14-year-old Sunnyvale boy on the ground, dug through his pockets — stealing a marijuana cigarette and $115 in cash. The girl screamed and ran away.

The boys then picked the victim back up and one of them kneed him in the groin, Wylie said. They threw him against a wall and told him not to call the police. They got into a gray SUV and fled. The girl never returned.

The boy called his father, who took him to the police station, Wylie. The boy expressed his suspicion that the girl had set him up for the mugging. He also told police that he recognized one of the two boys who mugged him.

After a brief investigation the police were able to identify the second teen boy, Wylie said. Police arrested the girl, 15, and the two boys, ages 15 and 16, all from Mountain View. They were charged with robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery. Their names are not being released because they are juveniles.

Because the victim was not in possession of the marijuana at the time the police dealt with him he was not charged with anything related to the possession of the drug, Wylie said. “Possession without possession amounts to only a confession of a crime, without the corpus. We need corpus to charge a crime.”

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1 Comment

  1. Elaine, by your post it sounds as if you think the majority of kids in MV do this sort of thing. Don’t you really think that this was an anecdotal situation? That the crime was done by a very small minority of “bad seed” kids that any town can and does have? Truly you don’t think this is the normal behavior of the majority kids in MV do you?
    Hopefully you just needed to get a little snark out of your system because I’ve found the vast majority of kids in MV to be a really top notch bunch.

  2. Yes, but the kids in Palo Alto and Los Altos tend to perform better and achieve more while Mountain View schools continue to teach to the low end with silly teaching concepts such as EDI.

  3. Dear Observer,

    Do you have a chip on your shoulder? A grudge? Prejudicial?

    Do you need “to get a little snark out of your system?”

    Just wondering…no need to respond.

  4. I think Observer has a point, not all of MV youth is in the wrong. Some choose to do unethical acts to other people for various reasons that we don’t know or don’t understand. In fact, MVHS did get better scores than LAHS and even St. Francis (a private school in MV), so please don’t think about for all of MV’s youth, they all have a bright future and we need to appreciate them because believe it or not, they’ll be taking care of us in the near future.

  5. I appreciate that the teen went to his dad and told him what happened rather than stay a silent victim. I’m sure this wouldn’t have been the group’s last attempt if this one teen hadn’t had the guts to speak up, even with the potential for being punished. I’m not an advocate for marijuana, or teens messing with drugs, but good on him.

  6. Just a clarification about who goes to which school — Mountain View High School has students from both Mountain View and Los Altos. Los Altos High School has students from both Los Altos and Mountain View. The boundary lines are somewhere around Escuela or Rengstorff.

    Both schools are part of the Mountain View Los Altos High School District.

    The city of residence does not dictate which school students attend.

  7. Who is your son. I will make sure it does not happen again. But you do not know the whole story and as a parent I think that you are very irresponsible for sounding like you think that this was ok. It was a horrible crime, and could have ended much worse. I am shocked that any parent would use this forum to put the type of message that you did. Please send me an email and we will discuss the bullying you mentioned. But you have no right to stoke the fire.

  8. And BTW again.

    The charges are: Robbery and Conspiracy to commit Robbery. No Laughing matter, This is not like stealing gum from 7-11 the kids should go to CA Youth Authority Facility until they are at least 18. (Prison) and as the father of the victim I will be at court to push for this.

  9. Good Kevin, I think you should ensure that those kids are punished to the full extent the law allows. For the record, I never said he deserved the events that occurred. I simply said I did not have sympathy for him. I am NOT the girl’s mother. In fact I am the parent of another kid at school who is CONSTANTLY bullied by your son and I am sick of it! His size has nothing to do with this. His actions do!

  10. I never, EVER, EVER said it was okay! Yes, he is lucky that it did not end up far worse, which it could have. As a parent I cannot imagine what it is like having to deal with this. My support is with you. I could never find joy in someone else’s pain nor would I ever condone acts of violence against anyone, especially children. And yes, you are correct; I DON’T know all the facts. The information presented in the article leaves far more questions than answers.

    Was I irresponsible for going on a public rant against a kid that bullies MY child? Yes I was and I’m very sorry. Hopefully, by aplogizing on the same forum in which I began my rant will serve as a lesson to others to choose their words more carefully. I wish I had.

    You don’t need to know who I am in order to speak with your son about being a bully. As a victim of bullies, he knows how much it hurts.

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