A 16-year-old boy is facing felony charges in connection with a string of armed robberies, burglaries and a carjacking across the city’s North and Northwest Sides, crimes that spanned four months and targeted both individual victims and businesses, police said.
The teen was arrested Thursday in the 1900 block of South Spaulding Avenue in the Lawndale neighborhood. Authorities have not released the suspect’s name because he is a minor. A juvenile detention hearing was scheduled for the following day.
Officers charged him with three felony counts of armed robbery, two counts of burglary and one count of aggravated vehicular hijacking with a firearm — a total of six charges stemming from incidents documented between January and April 2026.
A Pattern of Crime Across Multiple Neighborhoods
The earliest documented incidents occurred in rapid succession on the morning of January 3. The teen participated in an armed robbery of a 40-year-old man in the 3000 block of North Ashland Avenue at 5:46 a.m. Within the next 16 minutes, he was involved in burglaries of two businesses — one in the 2600 block of North Lincoln Avenue at 5:52 a.m. and another in the 3100 block of North Broadway at 6:02 a.m.
The second cluster of charged incidents unfolded on April 23, beginning with the carjacking of a 45-year-old woman at gunpoint shortly after midnight in the 1100 block of North Harding Avenue. Investigators said the teen, along with others, was then involved in two more armed robberies before 4 a.m. — one at Griddle 24, a 24-hour diner located in the 300 block of West Chicago Avenue in River North, and another at a 7-Eleven store in the 2300 block of North Damen Avenue.
At Griddle 24, officers separately documented that masked suspects entered the restaurant around 3:12 a.m., drew firearms, and took money from employees and customers while they were eating. A 23-year-old man was struck in the back of the head with a firearm and transported to a nearby hospital, where he was listed in good condition. The suspects fled the scene in a black sedan on Orleans Street.
Investigators described the teen as part of a broader crew being investigated in connection with multiple robberies and burglaries. The department’s Citywide Robbery Task Force was involved in tracking the activity. Arturo’s Tacos in the Bucktown neighborhood was also among businesses targeted by armed gunmen caught on surveillance video during the same spree, though no charges have been filed in connection with that incident.
Broader Context: Non-Residential Burglaries Rising in Major Cities
The charges come as data from the Council on Criminal Justice shows that the non-residential burglary rate in the first half of 2025 in the city was 50 percent higher than during the same period in 2024 — the highest level since August 2020 and a notable countertrend to declines in other crime categories. The robbery rate, by contrast, dropped 35 percent in the first half of 2025 compared to the prior year, outpacing an average 20 percent decline across 36 major U.S. cities in the same period.
What It Means for the Upstate: SC Property Crime in Focus
The pattern of coordinated juvenile-involved armed robbery and commercial burglary visible in major northern cities has parallels in public safety discussions playing out in South Carolina. The SC Law Enforcement Division’s 2024 annual crime report, released in December 2025, documented 1,949 robberies statewide — an 11.7 percent drop from 2023, continuing an eight-year decline and hitting the lowest level in 30 years. Burglaries reached a similar milestone, with 15,087 incidents statewide in 2024, the lowest figure in three decades.
Locally, the Spartanburg Police Department’s 2025 crime statistics showed property crimes at 1,781 incidents — 25 percent below the ten-year average and the lowest in the department’s tracked dataset. Burglaries accounted for 18 percent of property crime incidents in the city last year. Index crimes overall came in 22 percent below the ten-year average. Of violent crimes recorded in Spartanburg, 57 percent involved or alleged involvement of a firearm.
Prevention guidance from law enforcement agencies consistently identifies early closing-time awareness, functioning exterior lighting, visible security systems, and staff protocols for after-hours incidents as the most effective deterrents against the kind of early-morning commercial targeting seen in these cases. The Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office maintains a property crimes unit that handles commercial burglary investigations and offers prevention consultations to businesses.
The investigation remains active. Detectives said they are continuing to probe additional connections the crew may have to other unsolved robberies and burglaries.
