BELLEVUE, Wash. — An elderly Vietnamese-American woman came home from her job as a cook at a Skyway casino early Tuesday morning only to be approached by five suspects with guns drawn. It happened in the Factoria neighborhood around 4:30 a.m.
Police in Bellevue are calling it a "follow-home robbery." This is where a suspect follows their target right to their front door and proceeds to rob them. Officers said they can't remember the last time they investigated a crime like this in the jurisdiction of Bellevue.
"This was a very scary incident for the victim and her son," said Officer Seth Tyler of the Bellevue Police Department.
The woman's son was visibly shaken up on Tuesday.
"They woke me up, and then they just shoved their gun at me," said Jason Hoang, the robbery victim.
Bellevue detectives were able to discover that three separate vehicles were used by the five suspects to commit the crime, according to Tyler.
Tyler said the suspects "Essentially forced [the woman] into the apartment at gunpoint, held a gun on her and her son while they ransacked the house and stole valuables."
Hoang said, "They took my passport. I don’t know why. And a box of jewelry and a box of watches that I had, that’s gone."
Police are still looking for the five suspects. But they are fairly certain of why they targeted her: hoping she was carrying cash, "just due to the fact that they had left a casino."
Tyler added, “We definitely will be looking at similar occurrences in the region targeting Asian-American Pacific Islanders.”
Police have not said if the other similar invasions are related, but recent occurrences include an attempted follow-home robbery in Kent in October, where police say the victims were also Asian-American and were also coming home from a casino.
Then, in December, a separate home robbery of a South Asian-American family in Redmond.
Speaking of Redmond, Officer Jill Green, a spokesperson for their police department, told KING 5 Tuesday, "Detectives continue working with other agencies to determine if burglaries in neighboring communities are connected."
Meanwhile, a listening session is set to take place on Wednesday afternoon between Redmond Police Chief Darrell Lowe and the Indian-American community regarding home burglaries.