BY TOM CAIAZZA
Staff Writer
EDISON – Police may have put an end to a rash of robberies of Chinese food deliverymen on Thursday with a daring undercover arrest of two men, police said.
Khamar L. Watson, 21, of Edison, and William A. Roach, 22, of Philadelphia, were arrested on Thursday when undercover detectives posing as Chinese food deliverymen, caught the two men allegedly attempted to rob them in an impromptu undercover operation, said Lt. Joseph Shannon of the Edison police.
Between January and March, there had been an upward of half a dozen reports of armed men robbing Chinese food deliverymen in Woodbridge and Edison. At the time of the first wave of robberies, Edison Detective Cathy Vojir sent out notices and visited with the owners of many Chinese food restaurants, warning them about the current string of crimes to delivery personnel.
On May 11, one of those owners tipped off police that they had recognized the voice of a caller who may have placed an order in February that led to one of the robberies, Shannon said. The address was in the same area as the previous robbery as well.
Police, thinking quickly and working in conjunction with the owners of Jade Garden in the Inman Grove Shopping Center, devised an undercover operation within a matter of minutes that had Detective John Canavera assume the role of deliveryman with backup detectives both in the delivery van and in unmarked police cars nearby, Shannon said.
According to Shannon, Canavera approached the residence where the delivery was intended to go and noticed two black men sitting in a dark-colored car on Kings Bridge Road.
When the delivery van approached, one man quickly ducked out of the car and hid in nearby bushes while the other left the car as the officer exited the van.
The second suspect motioned for the detective to come to him claiming that the food was for him while the first man snuck out of the bushes behind Canavera, Shannon said.
Detectives immediately descended, weapons out, on the two men, arrested them and found knives in both men’s possession and pepper spray in Watson’s possession, Shannon said.
Both are charged with attempted robbery, unlawful possession of a weapon and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.
While the two men have only been charged with that night’s crime, Shannon believes they are responsible for the earlier rash of robberies.
“It got the job done,” Shannon said. “They had to think on the fly … and it worked out very well.”
Both men are being held at the Middlesex County Adult Correction Center on $500,000 bail.