Cell-heist hysteria - New York Post

Not cool!

Hundreds of Bronx high-school students are about to start summer vacation without their precious cellphones and iPods after three armed thugs stole the gadgets yesterday from a truck that stores them for about $1 a day.

The kids, who use the ironically named Safe Mobile Storage because electronic devices are banned from school, scrambled out from Christopher Columbus HS in a panic when word of the heist spread at about 11 a.m.

“They took my iPhone and my iPod Touch,” said Brandon Solas, 18, as he stood helplessly outside the truck parked down the block from his Bronxdale school.

Tomas E. Gaston

TEENAGE CRISIS: Tenth-grader Emily Marcus is on the verge of tears yesterday after her $400 HTC phone and the cellphones and electronic devices of hundreds of her Bronx schoolmates at Christopher Columbus HS were stolen from this truck, where kids store gadgets during school hours for a buck a day..

“My mom is going to clap me â€" she’s going to kick my ass!”

Solas said the robbery netted “mostly iPhones, iPod Touches and Blackberrys . . . They got a lot of dough on that one.”

Another student, Miriam Hernandez, wept hysterically in her boyfriend’s arms.

“That iPhone had everything â€" pictures of my boyfriend, my niece, my family’s videos â€" everything,” wailed Hernandez, 15. “I just got that iPhone and just put all that on there.

“And it looks like I’m not getting another one!”

The thugs rolled up on the Safe Mobile Storage truck at the corner of Bronxwood and Astor avenues in a silver Honda Civic, said owner Harold Richardson.

Two men knocked on the roll-up rear door of the converted U-Haul van.

Workers Maggie Miranda and Pedro Serrano opened the door, and they “stuck a gun to Maggie’s head” and jumped inside, Richardson told The Post as the two still shaken-up workers nodded.

“They threw them on the floor, tied them up with red [duct] tape, took the phones and the money,” Richardson said.

“A couple of hundred phones were taken . . . no idea on the cash yet, we have to do inventory,” Richardson said. “Thank God they didn’t hurt them â€" everyone’s OK.”

As the crooks sped off in the Honda, the workers freed themselves and called 911.

Richardson’s competitor â€" Cell Secure Electronic Storage â€" was parked about a dozen feet away with its vending window directly facing the Safe Mobile Storage truck, but a worker there insisted, “I didn’t see anything.”

Richardson â€" whose insurance covers the loss of the phones â€" said that until several months ago he had parked his truck directly in front of Christopher Columbus HS, but moved when “the school asked us.”

“The school has cameras,” he noted. “If they had done that in front of the school, this would be much different.”

There are cameras at the housing project next to the robbery scene, but it’s unclear if they captured the crime.

Richardson’s company has a pending lawsuit against the city, claiming it was repeatedly issued unfair summonses for “unlicensed general vending.”

The suit claims the truck does not require that license.

Additional reporting by Jamie Schram and Yoav Gonen

dan.mangan@nypost.com