April 19, 2008: Vol. 31, No. 16

A brazen thief pulled a gun on a woman on Degraw Street in the middle of the day on April 11 and mugged her for her iPhone and $5,000, cops said.

The woman was coming out of a building between Third and Fourth avenues at around 1:15 pm when the thief rushed over, pulled out his pistol, held it against his victim’s head and said, “Give me your purse and your cellphone.”

It is unclear whether he knew in advance that the 35-year-old woman was carrying $5,000, plus the fancy must-have mobile.

The victim gave cops little to work with, except to describe her assailant as a white man.

Bike thief

He had his bicycle for just one day.

A Lincoln Place man who plunked down $1,465 for a fancy Surly racing bike on April 10 told cops that it was stolen the very next day from in front of a house Seventh Avenue between Fifth and Sixth streets.

Earlier in the week, a Carroll Street man told cops that someone had stolen his 1998 Suzuki motorcycle from where he had left it on Polhemus Place, between Seventh and Eighth avenues on April 5 at around 7 pm.

For beers

A man was so desperate for some suds that he pulled a knife on a bodega clerk who tried to stop him from leaving the Fourth Avenue deli with four 22-ounce brews.

Cops don’t know the brand of the beer in question, but said that the thief entered the bodega, which is at the corner of Union Street, at just before midnight on April 8. He went to the cooler, pulled out the hoppy refreshment and just kept on walking towards the door.

That’s when the 23-year-old counterman confronted the would-be beer thief, who shoved him and pulled a knife.

The weapon served as his exit visa, though cameras did capture the 6-foot-1, 200-pound black man, cops said.

Feeding it

A thief acted quickly when he saw a store clerk leave her wallet on the counter of her Fifth Avenue boutique to go feed the meter on April 8.

When the 25-year-old woman returned to her post at the store, which is between 14th and 15th streets, she discovered that the bag was gone. The good news? There was nothing except credit cards and identification in the bag.

Cleaned out

It’s probably a good idea not to leave thousands in cash and electronics in your car.

A Queens man learned that lesson the hard way on April 8 after he parked his car in the lot of a popular hardware mega-store in the block bounded by Second Avenue, Ninth Street, the Gowanus Canal and 12th Street.

When he returned to the car at 11 am — just one hour after he parked it — he heard the car alarm blaring and discovered that the back door had been tampered with.

Closer inspection revealed that a digital camera, a laptop computer, an external hard drive and $1,710 had been taken from the vehicle.

Subway mug

A thief with a pair of boxcutter and steady hands mugged an 11th Street woman while she rode the F train towards Manhattan on April 7.

The woman told cops that she had gotten on the train at Seventh Avenue at around 8 am and soon felt a man brush up against her. When the man exited the train at Fourth Avenue, the woman noticed that her purse had been sliced open and her wallet was missing.

That billfold had contained $55, her Brooklyn College ID card, a 30-day MetroCard and various credit, debit and calling cards.

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper