Jeff Raasch and Vanessa Miller Updated: 19 November 2012 | 6:13 pm in Crime, Law and Justice, Johnson County, Linn County, Public Safety

SWAT team helps with northwest Cedar Rapids arrest

Two people taken into custody; incident connected to Iowa City case, police say


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Members of the Cedar Rapids Police Department's SWAT team respond to a home on Apache Trail NW Monday morning. (Jeff Raasch/The Gazette)

 

UPDATE: Authorities have arrested two people in connection with a Sunday night shooting in Iowa City that sent one man to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Peter Francis Thullen, 20, of Cedar Rapids, and Andrew David Meyer, 19, also of Cedar Rapids, both face charges of first-degree burglary and going armed with intent, both felonies.

The Iowa City and Cedar Rapids police departments are working together on the investigation. The suspects are waiting to be transported to the Johnson County Jail, where they will be held on $100,000 cash-only bonds.

Additional charges are pending further investigation.

Iowa City police on Monday took two people into custody in connection with a Sunday night shooting on Bloomington Street that sent one man to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Iowa City police were called to Mercy Iowa City at 9:13 p.m. Sunday on a report of an adult male who had been shot, according to a news release. Details surrounding the shooting have not been made public, but police said the man was shot by someone he knew.

The two people taken into custody in connection with the shooting were not immediately arrested or charged, according to Iowa City police Sgt. Denise Brotherton. Police did not release their names Monday, and the incident remains under investigation, Brotherton said.

The victim was transported to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics for non-life threatening injuries, and officers said they don’t believe there’s a threat to public safety.

Iowa City police on Monday secured the crime scene at 719 E. Bloomington St., and earlier in the day SWAT officers took a man into custody in northwest Cedar Rapids that officials said was connected to the Iowa City case.

Neighbors said the man came out of a white house at 1243 Apache Trail NW around 9:30 a.m. and was handcuffed without incident.

One neighbor said she saw 16 officers dressed in tactical gear near her house. Several of them were carrying assault rifles. She said the man, who she estimated was about 20 years old, came out with his hands up.

“I saw lots of gun barrels,” said the neighbor, who declined to give her name.

Cedar Rapids police didn’t disclose more details about the arrest except to say it was tied to an Iowa City case. Brotherton confirmed it was connected with the Sunday shooting in Iowa City.

A neighbor of the Iowa City shooting said he’s lived in the area for more than 15 years, and he’s concerned about the recent rash of crime.

“This morning I chased a guy off my porch at 3 a.m.,” said Tom Lally, noting that “normally it’s fairly docile.”

The neighborhood on Oct. 30 saw a pair of armed robberies in Black’s Gaslight Village, a residential community at 422 Brown St. In those cases, a suspect approached two victims at separate times and places within a few minutes of each other and demanded their purses at gunpoint.

One of the victims ran into her apartment and got away from the suspect, but the other person gave the suspect her purse, according to police. The suspect – described as a black male, about 5 feet 10 inches tall in his 20s or 30s – fled the scene and hasn’t been arrested.

Lally said he and his wife are concerned and have started taking their laptops with them when they leave home. He said the criminals appear to be after the “low-hanging fruit,” like electronics and purses.

“It’s something that’s happening in the north side that doesn’t normally happen,” Lally said. “It’s definitely something to be mindful of.”

 



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