Decatur Police Officers compare notes in the parking lot of Decatur High. File photo by Dan Whisenhunt

Decatur Police have arrested a young man accused of committing a carjacking and a robbery in March.

Police Sgt. Jennifer Ross said on April 10 that police had obtained a warrant for a 15-year-old male from Atlanta in connection with both cases. On April 13, she announced the suspect is in custody.

According to police, on March 16 a woman and her friend were in a rear parking lot in the 200 block of East Ponce De Leon Avenue, standing by the driver’s side door of her vehicle, when a man approached them. He had both hands in his jacket/hoodie pockets, Ross said.

The man told them, “Step away from the car.” They didn’t, thinking he was joking. He said it again. “Move away from the vehicle. I’m not afraid to shoot!”

The victim told police she thought she saw the handle of a gun sticking out of the jacket pocket. They moved away from the vehicle. The man got into the driver’s seat of the victim’s 2009 Toyota Matrix and fled the parking lot. He was last seen traveling east on Sycamore Street and stopped near the intersection of Sycamore and North Candler. He called out and two more men emerged from somewhere on North Candler Street and climbed into the car. They were last seen turning south on North Candler Street, going the wrong way on the one way street.

The victim told police her phone and backpack were inside the vehicle. She had a tracking feature on her cell phone and it showed the phone traveling south on Candler Road west on I-20. Police later found the vehicle on the 2400 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Southwest Atlanta.

In the March 10 incident, police responded to a robbery call in the 100 block of Lockwood Terrace at 10:13 pm. The victim told police she’d parked in her driveway when two men in their early 20’s approached her, wearing hooded sweatshirts. One had his right sleeve pulled down over his hand and he held his arm out, implying he was carrying a weapon. The suspects told the victim to get out of her vehicle and give them everything she had, Ross said.

“The victim complied and the suspects took her vehicle,” Ross said.