Editor's note: This report was updated at 4:41 p.m. with more information about the nature of Thursday's police raid.
Law enforcement officers from numerous East Bay cities swarmed a Newark neighborhood early this morning, where they raided homes and arrested four people connected to a string of armed robberies, according to police.
Search warrants were served at five houses near Cotton and Thomas avenues, off Cherry Street, on Thursday, said Sgt. Fred Bobbitt of the Fremont Police Department.
Bay City News reported that the arrests were related to bank robberies, and KTVU 2 News reported they were for robberies of liquor and convenience stores.
Four people were arrested and one person is still at large, said Sgt. Bill Veteran of the Fremont Police Department.
See the videos above for footage of the raid.
Officers from the Newark, Fremont, Union City, Milpitas and San Leandro police departments served the search warrants in the neighborhood between Central and Thornton avenues.
Neighbors told Patch that there was high traffic in and out of the homes that were searched, even late at night. Police said it is not a drug-related investigation.
SWAT units were on scene as early as 7 a.m., according to Newark residents, and Fremont police were searching a home on the 6300 block of Thomas Ave. until about 10 a.m.
Neighbors said they woke up to loud booms just after 7 a.m., which police said were not gunshots.
“It sounded like a bomb. It shook the whole neighborhood,” said resident James Wiley.
The investigation is ongoing and is headed by Fremont police, Bobbitt said.
Thursday's search comes one week after as part of an ongoing investigation into nearly 30 residential burglaries that have occurred in Belmont since May, according to Belmont police.
Email Nika.Megino@patch.com if you have information about this incident. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter @NewarkPatch for immediate updates on everything that's going on in Newark.
Milpitas Patch Editor Adelaide Chen and Bay City News contributed to this report.
