Last Updated: 9:50 AM, August 11, 2012
Posted: 2:00 AM, August 11, 2012
NEW YORK POST EXCLUSIVE - Bling-toting pre-schoolers are proving easy prey for New York’s most cowardly crooks.
A 4-year-old Bronx boy became the third toddler since July to lose fancy jewelry to a robber when a teenage thug grabbed a gold bracelet from his wrist, police sources told The Post yesterday.
Robert Rendon was walking home with his 14-year-old big sister Jayleen at about 12:45 p.m. Aug. 3 after they’d visited their mother at work.
Suddenly, they noticed they were being followed.
Jayleen caught a glimpse of the suspect in the reflection of a car window.
“He had his face covered . . . He was looking calm. I knew something was going to happen,” the teenager told The Post.
The brother and sister ducked into the stairway of their apartment on East 182nd Street in Belmont.
But their home proved no refuge — the teen thug barged through the door right behind them and grabbed Jayleen around the waist.
“He tried to grab me — and then, he like, he tried to force me with him,” Jayleen said.
Panicked, the girl screamed and ran upstairs to her apartment, where her grandmother was waiting.
When she fled, Jayleen admitted, she left Robert behind.
“I ran away — I let go of his [Robert’s] grip,” she said.
The suspect called out to her — “he just kept saying, ‘Come here,’ ” Jayleen said.
“My little brother was stuck on the first floor.”
The children’s grandmother ran downstairs, and found Robert safe, but crying.
It wasn’t until about 15 or 20 minutes later that they noticed Robert’s bracelet was missing.
“My mom bought it for him for his first birthday,” Jayleen said. “It had his name engraved on it.”
The next day, cops arrested 18-year-old Abubakarr Payinkay, of Claremont, and charged him with robbery, burglary, grand larceny and other charges. He is free on personal recognizance bail.
Robert was traumatized by the incident, his sister said.
“He’s just scared about it. He doesn't like doing anything anymore,” Jayleen said.
She’s still pretty upset, too.
“I’m scared,” Jayleen said. “I don’t like going out alone.”
Other criminals too spineless to pick on people their own size ripped off two Brooklyn tots of their jewelry last month.
Two-year-old Destiny Maizanche had a $300 bracelet stolen from her wrist in Bedford-Stuyvesant on July 6 by a thug who also grabbed a $400 necklace from her pregnant mom.
Cops arrested 30-year-old Michael Andrews in the attack.
Andrews allegedly targeted Destiny and her mother, Adriana Espinal, as they entered the elevator in a building on Flushing Avenue where the tot’s grandmother lives.
Espinal said she fought back against the thug by hitting him with her set of keys.
In another Bed-Stuy caper, 3-year-old Harvey Hernandez was robbed of a $400 neck chain in the lobby of his apartment on July 10 while he sat in a stroller pushed by his mom, Riyanna Guerrero.
Harvey’s godparents gave him the chain for his baptism. It has a small medallion depicting hands holding a child.
Days after the crime, Harvey was still afraid to go outside, his parents said.
jsimeone@nypost.com
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