Two robbers who stole phones and money from victims in Dover have been jailed for a combined total of more than 10 years.
Roland Berko, 22, and Erik Mata, 19, targeted a vulnerable man and a teenage boy in similar street robberies in January 2019.
They were found guilty of the robberies in March this year and, at Canterbury Crown Court on Tuesday 27 July 2021, Berko was jailed for six years and nine months and Mata was ordered to serve four years in a young offenders’ institution.
Berko’s sentence included terms for two burglaries which he carried out in the town in December 2018 and January 2019.
Robbery
The first robbery took place on 4 January 2019, when a vulnerable man in his 30s was walking along Folkestone Road in Dover.
Berko, Mata and another man followed him into an alleyway and one of them shouted: ‘I am a police officer, give me your bag.’
The victim kept hold of the bag but was dragged along the alleyway as the robbers pulled it from his back.
Items including the victim’s money, bank card, bus pass and mobile phone fell from the bag and were stolen by the men before the victim got away and called police.
Second offence
The second robbery took place on 7 January 2019 after the teenage victim went to a bus stop in London Road, Dover. He was asked to go around the corner into Templar Street by one of three males at the bus stop, who included Berko and Mata.
When he did so they surrounded him and one of them pulled a small knife on the boy while his pockets were searched and his cash and phone stolen.
Following a Kent Police investigation, Berko, of no fixed address, and Mata, formerly of Wood Street, Dover, were arrested and picked out at an ID procedure.
Charges
Berko was also charged with stealing electrical items from a house in Leighton Road, Dover during a burglary on 11 December 2018 and stealing a key from a property in De Burgh Hill, Dover on 18 January 2019.
Kent Police’s investigator in the case, Lyndsey Read, said: ‘These two men targeted the young and vulnerable and subjected them to terrifying robberies.
‘Kent Police is committed to protecting the most vulnerable in society and that involves getting justice for them after offences like this are committed.
‘These sentences will see both men removed from the streets of Dover and unable to target others in future.’