HPD: Man robs couple, drops stolen items during getaway

Demecio Antonio Velasquez charged with aggravated robbery with deadly weapon

Demecio Velasquez

HOUSTON – A man has been accused of attacking a woman in southwest Houston, and police said he gave them an easy way to identify him.

Houston police said a woman was walking near her car in the 12900 block of Clarewood near Synott about 9:20 a.m. on Dec. 6 and spotted a man wearing a paper painter's mask in a driveway.

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The man ran up to the woman, pulled a gun from his coat, pointed it at her head and told the woman to walk back into her home, where her husband and wheelchair-bound son were, police said.

When the two got to the woman's home, the man told the woman to tell her husband to come to the door. The man forced the couple to lay on the ground and demanded money, police said. The woman told them man where he could find cash in the home and then had the couple walk though the home with him as he picked out items to steal, detectives said.

Before the man left, he locked the couple in a bathroom and tied the door shut with a curling iron, investigators said.

The husband managed to get out and saw the man in the alleyway as he was being confronted by maintenance workers, detectives said. The maintenance workers asked the man about a TV he was carrying.

As the husband ran over to the man and maintenance workers, the man was no longer wearing the mask and his entire face was visible.

"I said, 'Where did you get that?' He said, 'My homeboy gave it to me.' I said, 'Where is your homeboy?'" maintenance worker Henry Hoge said.

The man put the TV on the ground and ran away, police said.

Officers said they pulled fingerprints off the TV and they matched 24-year-old Demecio Antonio Velasquez. He was then charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon.

Velasquez has an extensive criminal history that includes convictions on charges of tampering with evidence, burglary of a habitation, drug possession and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Velasquez is being held in the Harris County Jail with bond set at $50,000.