Man linked to Berkeley robbery spree gets 9-year sentence
In 2021, BPD detectives linked Nute to three armed robberies in Berkeley within just 30 minutes.
An El Sobrante man who had been linked to armed robberies in Berkeley targeting people leaving banks has been sentenced to nine years in state prison, court records show.
Eddie Nute, 30, had been in custody since 2021 in connection with the charges against him.
He was transferred from Santa Rita Jail to North Kern State Prison last month. Nute's conviction was the result of a plea deal in March.
In 2021, BPD detectives linked Nute to three armed robberies in Berkeley within just 30 minutes.
Nute ultimately faced charges related to six East Bay robberies: four on Aug. 10, 2021, and two others in July of that year.
The robberies took place in Castro Valley, San Leandro and Piedmont (where automated license plate readers caught Nute's getaway car, police said) as well as in Berkeley.
At the time of his arrest in 2021, Nute already had several felony convictions, including a reckless evasion case in 2016 that garnered significant media attention.
"Nute currently has a $1 million active warrant out for his arrest related to the investigation for over 50 counts of auto burglary, conspiracy, as well as a gang enhancement," Fremont police wrote in 2017.
Eddie Nute. BPD
Berkeley police said surveillance footage and his getaway car helped them identify Nute as the suspect in the Aug. 10, 2021, robbery series.
That day, police said, Nute robbed a Berkeley man in his 20s, who had just left Bank of America, at College Avenue and Woolsey Street; a Berkeley man in his 60s who was in the Wells Fargo parking lot at 1095 University Ave. (at San Pablo); and a Hayward man in his 30s who was in the Mechanics Bank parking lot at 755 Hearst Ave. (between Fourth and Fifth streets).
When Berkeley police detectives went to arrest Nute at his home in El Sobrante several weeks after those robberies, they "found a stolen handgun with a high-capacity magazine 'hidden inside of a children’s laundry basket,'" this reporter wrote on Berkeleyside at the time.
Nute confessed to several of the robberies when he was interviewed by police, authorities wrote in court papers.
