May 24, 2010
May 23, 2010, 9:50 PM | Updated: Jun 5, 2012, 4:22 am
PHOENIX – There was only one thing that Lavene could see.
“Once I saw there was a gun barrel in my chest, I couldn’t see anything else but that gun,” Lavene said.
Lavene was sitting in his car, along the curb in front of a house, near 24th Street and Lincoln on the morning of April 21st. He was on his phone and waiting for his client to get home.
A woman approached his driver’s side window and asked to use his phone to make a call.
Lavene said that at that moment, a man came up from behind him and “poked a revolver in (his) face and said he was going to blow (Lavene’s) head off.”
The man then demanded Lavene’s cell phone.
“He grabbed it out of my hands, and then he said, ‘Give me your wallet,'” Lavene said. “And I started fumbling for the wallet. He decided that wasn’t quick enough, so he opened the car door and said, ‘Get out of the car and get on the ground.’ So I started to get out and that wasn’t quick enough, so he grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me out of the car.”
Then the man shoved Lavene to the ground.
“I was going down to my knees, and that wasn’t fast enough, so he hit me in the back with the butt of the gun, and then he kicked me flat on the ground,” Lavene said.
The gunman then stepped over Lavene and got in the car.
“When he slammed the door, I thought ‘Oh my gosh he’s going to drive off,'” Lavene said. “And then I heard the car start. And when I went down, I’m in front of the left rear wheel, so my arm was under the front of that left rear wheel. As I moved my arm, the car wheel drove past my body, so it was very close.”
Lavene escaped with just scrapes and bruises.
“The vehicle was recovered, but a large amount of cash was taken from inside the vehicle,” Phoenix Police Sergeant Darren Burch said.
Burch says both suspects are Hispanic. The woman is probably in her early 30’s, and the man may be is in his 20’s.
