2-Oct-2017

Restaurant robber with semi-automatic weapon nabbed by TrueAllele® DNA results

Thousand Oaks, CA

From July 2015 to May 2016, a lone man robbed three restaurants in Thousand Oaks, CA. He "used a semi-automatic handgun to instill fear in his victims." Police collected a cell phone left by the perpetrator, and zip ties used to restrain a victim. Later, police collected a cast-off straw discarded by a suspect as seen by surveillance.

The Ventura County Sheriff's Department asked Cybergenetics to make an evidence-to-evidence comparison between the cast-off straw and the cell phone. TrueAllele extracted the major contributor from each of the mixture DNA items, and produced a match statistic of around 10 quintillion. Weeks later, Cybergenetics received a known standard from suspect Andre Love. Mr. Love matched the straw and phone with statistics in the ten quintillions. He matched a zip tie with statistics in the hundreds.

On September 25, 2017, Cybergenetics Supervisor William Allan testified about the DNA results in the Ventura County Superior Court. Days later, a jury found Mr. Love guilty on all five counts of robbery. Senior Deputy District Attorney James Sullivan said, "TrueAllele results were very helpful, and I intend to use Cybergenetics on future cases."

• Restaurant Robbery Suspect Arrested - Ventura County Sheriff's Office
• Police say they solved string of restaurant robberies - Thousand Oaks Acorn