Officers responded to the Santa Rosa Marketplace near Applebee's restaurant on Santa Rosa Avenue after receiving a 1:20 p.m. call about an armed robbery there, police said.
The Lake County couple - an 18-year-old woman and 20-year-old man - told police they were near their car in the parking lot when two men they had met several weeks earlier at a local marijuana dispensary approached them.
One of the men pulled out a handgun and stole the couple's marijuana and paraphernalia, police said.
One of the suspects also struck the male victim across the face, leaving him with a laceration, Linscomb said. The suspects then fled the scene in a Cadillac that had one other man inside it, according to police.
Police broadcasted a description of the Cadillac, and a Sonoma County sheriff's deputy recognized the car driving south on Petaluma Hill Road near Adobe Road.
The deputy stopped the Cadillac and found that the occupants - who matched the provided suspect descriptions - were in possession of several ounces of marijuana and paraphernalia believed to have been stolen from the Lake County victims, police said.
The sheriff's deputy also found a handgun abandoned on the side of the road north of where the Cadillac was pulled over, according to police.
The occupants of the Cadillac - 23-year-old Najee Antoine Pierson of Larkspur, 20-year-old Sean Kreuzer of Novato, and 21-year-old Tyler Roger Crane, also of Novato - were arrested and booked into Sonoma County jail on suspicion of armed robbery, police said.
Anyone with information about this case is encouraged to call the
Santa Rosa Police Department's violent crimes investigations team at (707)
543-3590.
