Police Hunting for Candidate Bandit

A day after congressional candidate Marleine Bastien was robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight outside a church while campaigning in North Miami, police were doing their own canvassing for the gunman behind the brazen holdup.

Police spent much of Sunday searching for the suspects who robbed Bastien and her sister just before they were set to make an appearance at mass at the Church of the Living God at 13700 Northeast 10th Ave.

And it turns out Bastien wasn't the only target of the robbers that day. The same pair of thieves had robbed another woman nearby just minutes before, according to police spokesman Lt. Neal Cuevas.

In both cases, the victims were robbed at gunpoint by one suspect while another drove their getaway car.

"Lately it seems they are more brazen," Cuevas told the Miami Herald. "They don't care who the victims are, or what time of day it is, or where they are. They're just hell-bent on robbing people and stealing their possessions."

The first victim, Micheline Tarte, was robbed of her purse on Northeast 133rd Street between Northeast First and Second avenues. In both robberies, the gunman's getaway car was silver. The three women describe him as a black male, between 18 and 24 years old, about 5-foot-3 and around 145 pounds with dreadlocks.

The 51-year-old Bastien is running in the Democratic primary for an open House seat in a South Florida district, one of nine candidates trying for the seat being left by U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek.

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