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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Gloria Oladipo

Indiana stickup man asks victim out via Facebook after robbery

Amber Beraun was allegedly robbed by a man who asked if she had a boyfriend and then forced her to add him as a friend on Facebook.
Amber Beraun was allegedly robbed by a man who asked if she had a boyfriend and then forced her to add him as a friend on Facebook. Photograph: José Luis Magaña/AP

An Indiana woman who was robbed at gunpoint was later asked out by the perpetrator on Facebook.

Last month, Amber Beraun, who lives in Indianapolis, was checking her mailbox late at night when a man approached her with a gun, WRTV reported.

The man, identified as Damien Boyce, demanded to be let into Beraun’s home.

“He took it out of his pocket to show me what was going on – ‘let me into your house.’ I did not do that,” Beraun told WRTV.

Beraun refused and gave Boyce all the cash she had on hand, about $100. But instead of leaving, Boyce asked Beraun if she had a boyfriend and forced her to add him as a friend on Facebook.

“I thought if maybe I added him on Facebook, he would leave – and he did,” she told the TV station.

But later, Beraun says that Boyce started messaging her on Facebook.

“Damn you was too pretty to rob,” wrote Boyce in one message, with a promise to pay Beraun back, according to court documents cited by WRTV.

Boyce then asked Beraun to “come chill”, in a follow-up message.

“It makes me a little on edge knowing that people walk up and down the street, looking for places to commit crimes,” Beraun said to WRTV.

“It makes it a little different when you hear noises at night.”

Boyce was arrested on 12 June for a separate robbery, when he allegedly shot two people and injured another person with a brick, the New York Post reported.

A Swat team was deployed for the 12 June arrest.

Boyce is being held on a $7,500 bond for several charges including burglary, unlawful carrying of a handgun and battery.

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