Cops bust home-invasion suspects

Two men allegedly took cellphones from women in apartment.

Two armed men broke into an apartment on Chew Street in Allentown on Wednesday night and stole cellphones from two women before they were chased down and arrested by responding city police officers, according to court records.

Benson Edouard, 32, of East Orange, N.J., and Kraig Daubert, 23, with no current address, are being charged with robbery, burglary, theft and receiving stolen property. Edouard is also facing a weapons violation for having a gun without a license.

They were both arraigned Thursday morning by District Judge David M. Howells Jr., who sent them to Lehigh County Jail under $100,000 bail each.

Allentown police were dispatched at 11:19 p.m. Wednesday to an apartment in the 300 block of Chew Street on a report of a burglary in progress. The first officer to arrive to the scene met with a man who told him the armed men were still inside his apartment, along with his girlfriend and mother.

Officers surrounded the building and two men were seen fleeing from the rear of the apartment and running out to Jordan Street, police said.

The two men split up and officers chased one of the men into a backyard on Chew Street, police said. There, they arrested Edouard hiding under a toy car, court records show. Officers found a gun hidden in an empty washing machine, police said. The gun was later discovered to have been stolen out of Salisbury Township, police said.

Daubert was arrested about a block and a half way, in the area of North Jordan and Brush streets, police said. Police found a duffel bag containing the stolen items inside.

Police spoke to the victims and were told the armed men forced their way into a bedroom where the two women had been and pistol-whipped one of them. A man officers interviewed said he heard the commotion and went to investigate and a gun was pointed at his face. He said he grabbed his 2-year-old child and ran out of the building and called police.

mgamiz@mcall.com Twitter @mannypantalones 610-820-6595