Gun Wielding Thieves Take Over Berkeley Massage Parlor, Get Away with Cash

June 27, 2012
By Doug Oakley
Staff Writer
doakley@bayareanewsgroup.com


Berkeley police are on the lookout for a woman and two men who forced employees of a University Avenue massage parlor at gunpoint into a backroom Sunday morning and stole about $2,000 in cash and personal items, authorities said.

Police said suspects of the takeover robbery at Magic Fingers Spa at 2047 University Avenue at 1:10 a.m. Sunday include a gun wielding woman described as white, 120 pounds around 30 years old with yellow hair. She was accompanied by two Hispanic men in their 30s. One of the men is described as weighing 140 pounds, tall and strong and with short hair. The second is described as weighing about 135 pounds with a "pigtail hair style" and wearing a dark coat.

Police said no injuries to the employees were reported. A woman who answered the door at Magic Fingers declined to comment.

In an apparently unrelated crime right next door on Monday at 4:30 a.m., someone threw a large rock through the front window of a business called Nepalese Gifts, stealing $3,000 worth of bongs and vaporizers and doing about $2,000 in damage to the plate glass window, the owner said.

Doug Oakley covers Berkeley. Contact him at 510-843-1408.