Broad-Daylight Crimes: Home Burglary in Narberth, Armed Robbery in Radnor

Two brazen, broad-daylight crimes along the Main Line within two days of each other have police and residents scratching their heads.

On Tuesday morning in Narberth, a burglar climbed on top of a large rock, sliced open a window screen to enter a house, stole thousands of dollars in jewelry and other valuables and then fled—all in the 30 minutes the homeowner was gone Tuesday morning, police said.

The resident of a home on the 400 block of Grove Place, near the SEPTA tracks in south Narberth, went to a doctor's appointment at 9 a.m. Tuesday and returned at 9:30 to a ransacked bedroom, police said.

ON THURSDAY IN RADNOR, a woman was held up at gunpoint outside of the Starbucks on Lancaster Avenue in Radnor. She was putting her small child in the back seat when the gunman approached her, Sergeant Andrew Block said during a press conference on Thursday.

The man put the handgun to the victim's face and told her to remove her jewelry. The woman turned over her jewelry and watch, and the man in question took the woman’s purse out of her car before fleeing the scene in a white Toyota. No one was injured in the incident.

Police say that around 10:30 that same morning a “person of interest” was seen on surveillance cameras using credit cards taken from the women’s purse to buy gift cards from a Target on Baltimore Pike in Springfield, Delaware County.

Block said that the Radnor Police are offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the identity of the person or people of interest in this incident.

“This is unusual for Radnor,” Block said. “But we want to show that we have zero tolerance for this type of thing.”

IN NARBERTH, Mayor Tom Grady encouraged vigilance in his weekly NarbNet email bulletin to residents.

"Make sure we keep a good watch on each of our neighbor’s homes and neighborhoods," Grady wrote. "There are some bad people out there that will break into homes and we need to make sure we keep an alert for any suspicious activity."

Anyone who has information about the Grove Place burglary can call Narberth borough police at 610-664-8160.