Vanity Plate Leads to Robbery Suspect Arrests

Santa Rosa police arrested two of three men suspected of committing a home invasion robbery at gunpoint Wednesday afternoon, a police sergeant said.

Three residents of the east Santa Rosa home in the 2500 block of Vallejo Street, a 46-year-old woman and two teens ages 17 and 18, said three armed suspects entered the home looking for marijuana and electronics, said

The suspects took an iPad and left when they were told there was no marijuana in the residence, Navarro said. They drove away in a vehicle with a personalized license plate.

Santa Rosa police detectives arrived at the house at 3:10 p.m. While there, they they learned that Sonoma County Sheriff's deputies had stopped the suspects' vehicle on Barlow Lane in an unincorporated area of the county near Sebastopol.

The driver of the vehicle, Gerald Venditti, 69, of Graton, was identified by the robbery victims as one of the three suspects. He was arrested for residential robbery and making death threats, Navarro said.

In the investigation, detectives also learned where the other two suspects might be.

At 9:30 p.m., investigators stopped a vehicle on northbound Mendocino Avenue near Chanate Road in Santa Rosa. A passenger in the vehicle, Andrew Pickering, 21, of Santa Rosa, was arrested for residential robbery and making death threats after he was identified as one of the three robbery suspects, Navarro said.

Police then served search warrants at residences in the 200 block of Iowa Street in Santa Rosa and the 8000 block of Cider Springs Road in Sonoma County near Sebastopol, Navarro said.

The third suspect, identified as Geoffrey Michaelis, 33, of Santa Rosa, is still at large, Navarro said. Michaelis is 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighs 200 pounds and has black hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information about him is asked to call police at (707) 543-3590.

-- Bay City News Service