Police identify two of three Facetime robbers
An Austin man was pistol whipped inside of his own apartment as his horrified girlfriend watched the whole thing on Facetime.
It's a nightmare, college student Yale Gerstein wouldn't wish on his worst enemy.
“I was sitting at my computer, I was on Facetime and heard scratching at the door,” said Gerstein.
He thought it was a cat but now he wishes he could say that.
“As soon as I unlocked the bolt door and it clicked, the door burst open and smacked me in the mouth,” said Gerstein.
It was three men who entered and threw him onto the ground and started pistol whipping him.
Gerstein's girlfriend Baylee Lucciani watched it unfold right before her eyes, from Dallas.
“I'm being pulled by my hair onto a bed and they're smacking me with a pistol and one of them is pointing at the computer and says ‘who's watching us?’” said Gerstein.
Lucciani took screenshots which came in handy for police. They've now identified two of the three robbers.
“We received information from Sgt. Perrera from AISD police. He recognized the suspect as being an AISD student. He contacted us and identified Michael Aleman Jr.
The other suspect, Jacob Carter's own mother identified him from the screenshots. It's a digitally driven world and police are taking advantage of it.
“We've certainly seen more incidents of social media helping with our investigations, people being on the phone or using snapchat at the time a robbery's occurring and getting photos of the suspects,” said Sgt. William White, Austin Police Department.
“I've never had a situation where someone comes aggressively towards you and takes, or tries to take you for everything they could carry that wasn't bolted to the floor,” said Gerstein.
Gerstein says the robbers got away in a white police interceptor car with thousands of dollars of music equipment, instruments, and even a full album which he says he worked countless hours on. He says he doesn't know the three guys.
Police haven’t been able to identify the third person yet. They said he's more than six-feet-tall and was wearing a Halloween ghost mask during that robbery.