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Garfield police add robbery charges for ‘Bergen bandit’

EXCLUSIVE: Garfield police today added robbery charges to the list of those against a man who held up businesses in three other towns, as well.

Photo Credit: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
Photo Credit: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
Photo Credit: Courtesy HASBROUCK HEIGHTS PD
Photo Credit: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter

Hamilton Sanchez-Olmo, 21, was already being held on $2.25 million bail in the Bergen County Jail.

He is charged with two robberies in Hasbrouck Heights and one each in Elmwood Park, Lodi and now Garfield, along with weapons counts in each.

Sanchez-Olmo was arrested in Lodi just after midnight last Monday, shortly after police said he robbed a 7-Eleven there.

A Bergen County Police Department K9 unit and Lodi police found Sanchez-Olmo hiding in a dumpster barely 110 yards down Essex Street from the store after sources said he’d just taken $100 at gunpoint from two employees there.

The weapon turned out to be a BB gun, one of them told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

CLIFFVIEW PILOT broke the news overnight: CLICK HERE ….

Lodi Police Sgt. Louis Ruffel was on patrol when he saw the 5-foot-11, 150-pound Sanchez-Olmo run from the convenience store removing what appeared to be a ski mask, police said. He vanished as workers ran out, shouting that they’d been robbed.

Officers from Hasbrouck Heights, Hackensack, Maywood and the county flooded the area before the BCPD dog Eiffel led his handler to the garbage bin.

“He covered himself in garbage and was a mess when they got him out,” a law enforcement source told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Sanchez-Olmo then led police to the gun, ditched nearby, another said. They also recovered the mask.

Authorities at the time said they believed Sanchez-Olmo was responsible for four other robberies and a botched holdup last weekend.

Two occurred 20 minutes and barely a mile apart last Sunday night — first at a Lodi pizzeria and then back in Hasbrouck Heights, where the robber first struck the night before.

The spree began around 8:20 p.m. March 15 at a Rite Aid in the 100 block of Boulevard in Hasbrouck Heights .

After walking halfway down an aisle, Sanchez-Olmo pulled a ski mask over his face and walked straight to the front of the store, police said.

Pointing a black handgun, he ordered the cashier in a Spanish accent to empty the register into his black Jansport backpack, they said.

Surveillance image:
Courtesy HASBROUCK HEIGHTS PD

He then bolted south on Boulevard, turned a corner and got into what police believe was a dark-colored, four-door Volkswagen sedan that then headed west.

Later that night, authorities said, the same robber hit a Sunoco station convenience store in Elmwood Park.

The next day, police believe the same man made off with $660 after pulling a gun on a CVS clerk at Midland and Van Winkle avenues in Garfield.

He wearing nearly all black, including a wool hat, as well as a red scarf covering his face, and “pointing a handgun at the teller threatened to shoot her if she didn’t hand over the money,” Detective Capt. Darren Sucorowski told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Also that day, police believe Sanchez-Olmo tried to rob Pizza Zone at South Main Street and Lincoln Place in Lodi but left empty-handed. He was wearing a black mask and gloves, they said.

Twenty minutes later, police said, Sanchez-Olmo hit the Minit Mart in the 300 block of Hasbrouck Heights about a mile from the Lodi holdup.

He had the mask and backpack and what were described as silver or grey sneakers, they said.

Hamilton Sanchez-Olmo, Central Municipal Superior Court Judge Louis Dinice (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)

 

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