Man robbed while helping panhandler

An elderly man was robbed Sunday after he agreed to help a man who was begging for cash.

The elderly man, who is confined to a wheelchair, was at his home in a retirement community near 3000 South and 1300 East just before 6 p.m. when a white male in his late teens or early 20s, with blond hair and one earring, came to his front door, Salt Lake Police detective Dennis McGowan said.

The panhandler asked for some gas money. But when the man in the wheelchair took his cash out of his pocket and separated $2 from the other bills, the other man quickly opened the screen door, grabbed all of the cash and ran off.

Around the same time, an apartment directly upstairs was burglarized. That burglary involved an unforced entry as the screen door was closed but not locked, McGowan said. The two incidents could be connected.

— Ethan Thomas