Charges pending in carjacking suspect

Police confirmed Saturday that charges are pending against a 29-year-old man suspected of a violent carjacking in a west-end parking lot Tuesday.

Around 4:30 Friday afternoon, officers arrested the man at a north Edmonton strip mall after he was spotted by a security guard. Police had earlier released surveillance photos of the suspect. The man was known to police, said Staff Sgt. Barry Maron. At first, the man was referred to as a person of interest. Now he is being held in custody and is expected to be charged this weekend. His name has not been released.

It was a bad week for carjackings in the city, with at least three other reported incidents. There were two incidents on Friday night, neither of which involved the 29-year-old man currently in custody. One incident was in the Kingsway Mall parking lot, where a man with a knife and another with an expandable baton stole a vehicle from a driver around 7:20 p.m. The thieves took his maroon 2008 Honda Civic.

One suspect was described as a man in his 30s with light brown hair and a “noticeable belly,” wearing a faded orange shirt and grey jacket. The second man was in his early 20s, with a thin face and light blond hair. He wore a green sweater and blue jacket.

In north Edmonton, a woman was threatened by another woman with a knife in a restaurant parking lot. After a struggle, the victim handed over a small amount of money and the suspect fled on foot.

In what police believed is another unrelated incident, three suspects are at large after a woman was pulled from her vehicle Thursday night in a parking lot near 106th Avenue and 102nd Street.

The woman, 45, was exiting an apartment complex parking lot when police say three men in their 20s approached the vehicle with scarves over their faces. One man got in the passenger side of the vehicle and the other opened the driver’s door, pulling the woman out, who was uninjured.

The vehicle, a grey Ford Freestyle, licence plate HUX 341, hasn’t been recovered.