Police investigating connection between armed robberies in Wilmette and Skokie

WILMETTE, Ill. (WLS) -- Police in north suburban Wilmette and northwest suburban Skokie are investigating two armed robberies that could possibly be connected. In Wilmette, two masked men attempted to rob and carjack a woman who had just arrived at a home at gunpoint; in Skokie, three masked men robbed a man of his cell phone also at gunpoint.

Wilmette police said the 30-year-old woman had just pulled into her driveway in the 400-block of Sandy Lane just before 9 p.m. when she was confronted by two men between the ages of 18 and 21 in ski masks who pointed a gun at her and threatened to shoot. The woman began screaming and the suspects ran away.

The victim said the men demanded her purse and keys and told her they'd kill her if she didn't comply.

Two neighbors told ABC7 Eyewitness News they heard the woman yelling for help while they were out helping another neighbor look for a runaway dog.

"She pulled up in a driveway and walk from the front of her car to the back of her car to get stuff out, and that's when they tried to jump her.," said Marius Burja.

From inside her home, Kaffa Fakouhi head the familiar sound of her daughter's voice.

"She screamed, 'Call 911, call 911!'" Fakouhi said.

"She said that he said, 'Give me your car key or I have a gun, I will shoot you,'" Fakouhi said. "At that point she said, 'My mom is watching you from upstairs in the window.' As soon as she said that, they walked away."

Police said the pair fled in a silver or white Toyota Camry that was waiting for them.

Burja said that when he arrived in the victim's driveway she was shaken up, but otherwise unharmed.

A little more than a mile away in Skokie, Mazdak Khoshnood thought nothing of a summer evening stroll down his childhood street in Skokie.

"On the way back, a couple houses down from here, three guys hop out of a silver car right here and run towards me," Khoshnood said.

He said the men demanded his cell phone, but when he refused they threatened him.

"Once he put a gun to my head I thought, I don't want to get shot over something as dumb as a phone," he said.

Both victims were visiting parents in the suburbs, and say they won't be back for a while.