For two weeks, Roberto Ticas-Mojica allegedly stole his way through nine convenience stores in Aurora before fleeing on his bike, according to Aurora Police. Investigators said they began calling him the "Ride Away Robber."
On Nov. 29, Aurora Police caught up with the silver bike riding suspect near Seventh Avenue and Peoria Street, according to an APD Tweet.
"This was good, old fashioned police work and a team effort," Sgt. Faith Goodrich, the public information officer with the Aurora Police Department, said.
Though no alert was issued to the public for those two weeks, an internal notification was sent out department wide, Goodrich said. Combined with data analysis and tracking, officers located Ticas-Mojica and make the arrest.
The choice to not issue a wide-reaching public notification was a conscious one, according to Goodrich. It was an effort to keep the suspect oblivious to the fact that APD was on to him and had the added benefit of not causing any panic.
"Our tools tend to work best when suspects are unaware of them," she said. "We didn’t send out a public notification on our social media because we wanted to balance public fear of crime with our catching someone."
Catching an alleged criminal absolutely depends on how easy that individual makes it. They could use the same car or bike, wear a distinctive hat at every robbery or have some other kind of distinguishing feature that makes an investigator's life easier, she said.
"Pattern recognition that leads to an arrest takes time," she said.
This is not CSI:Aurora. There are no databases for random things and facial recognition doesn't take seconds or minutes. Tools exist for police to gather evidence, like phone records, but rarely does that process finish by the end of a workday, investigators have said previously.
Ticas-Mojica is being held on suspicion of felony menacing with a real/simulated weapon. His bond has been set at $10,000, according to court records. He's scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.
The suspect had an open warrant for his arrest after he allegedly failed to appear in court on a driving-without-a-license charge in September of 2019.
