McKeesport teen charged in robberies
A McKeesport teenager was charged Friday with robbing or attempting to rob three pizza delivery drivers in Pittsburgh’s West End in July and August.
Kieran Ford, 17, is charged as an adult with three felony counts of robbery and several related counts. Investigators believe he carried out robberies on July 15, July 22 and Aug. 1 in Elliott, at times with as-yetunknown accomplices.
On July 15, a Pizza Hut delivery driver was delivering pizzas to 736 Janewood Way — an abandoned home on a dead end alley — when a bystander approached his car and tried to warn the driver that the home was abandoned and he suspected a robbery.
As the bystander was talking to the driver, two young men in masks approached and pointed a silver revolver at the bystander. The pizza driver sped away, and the men robbed the bystander of $40, according to a criminal complaint.
The second and third robberies occurred at 726 Bucyrus St. In the first, a young man with a firearm approached a Pizza Parma delivery driver and demanded “everything he had.” The driver ran away, and when he later returned to his delivery car he found $110 in pizzas was missing.
In the third robbery, a Pizza Hut driver brought the pizza to the front door of the house when a young man with a revolver came around the corner of the house and demanded that she give him her money. The driver gave him about $15, and the young man fled.
Police used surveillance video, text messages and witness accounts to connect Kieran to the robberies. Police picked up the 17-year-old Brashear High School student on an unrelated juvenile warrant on Thursday and held him for questioning in the robberies. Kieran told investigators that his mother threw him out of the house several months ago and he’d been staying in an abandoned building before moving to a youth shelter in McKeesport.
The teenager said his mother was in a hospital, although he did not know which one, and said he did not have contact with his father. He sometimes is in contact with his aunt but did not know her phone number. Police then interviewed him without a parent or guardian present.
Kieran admitted to being present during the robberies but said another man wielded the gun. Police were unable to verify the other man’s identity.
Kieran was being held in the Allegheny County Jail on a $50,000 bond, which he cannot pay. He is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing in City Court, Downtown, on Dec. 5, a few days before his 18th birthday.