New Canaan Police last week arrested a 48-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y. man by warrant and charged him in connection with multiple residential burglaries in New Canaan, court records show.
The man is suspected in one burglary where more than $130,000 in jewelry and watches were stolen from a Lost District Drive home, according to an arrest warrant application obtained by NewCanaanite.com.
He first came onto NCPD’s radar in December. At about 8:37 p.m. on Dec. 13, officers received a report of a burglary on Lost District Drive, according to Officer Kelly Coughlin’s affidavit, which forms most of the arrest warrant application signed by a state Superior Court judge.
The victim told Coughlin that she had left her home at about 10 a.m. and returned at 8:10 p.m. to find that “the master bedroom and walk-in closet on the second floor had been ransacked,” the affidavit said.
“When officers checked the residence, a ladder was discovered on the ground outside, underneath a broken master bathroom window on the second floor, which was determined to be the point of entry/exit,” Coughlin said in the affidavit. “The victim shared there were multiple ladders inside her detached garage on the property, which had been left unsecured and the ladder located on the ground had been taken from there. The victim reported over $130,000 worth of jewelry and watches had been stolen during the burglary.”
Four days later, officers were dispatched to a Hickok Road home on a report of a burglary that had occurred between Dec. 12 and 14.
“Pry marks were located on a first-floor window sill, which was believed to be the point of entry,” the arrest warrant application said. “Miscellaneous jewelry, a watch, a bag and U.S. and Canadian coins with a total value of approximately $3,000 was stolen.”
NCPD got word from the Greenwich Police Department that the latter agency had been investigating its own residential burglaries between Oct. 29 and Dec. 13 and that “second floor windows were used as the points of entry for five out of six of these burglaries with one more burglary having an unknown point of entry,” the application said.
“There was also evidence that ladders were used such as that at one of the burglary scenes, a ladder had been left behind by a painting crew and had been used. It was confirmed that most of these residences had jewelry stolen from them and the focus was on ransacking the master bedroom and master closets.”
GPD had developed a suspect vehicle used in the burglaries—a black Mercedes G-Wagon with a New York plate—and New Canaan Police, using its license plate readers, found that it had 10 hits in town between Dec. 11 and 13, the arrest warrant application said.
GPD also found the name of the man who had rented the vehicle from an Enterprise in South Hampton, N.Y. (he’d given the car rental a Miami home address), a Georgian national, and put in for a search warrant for his T-Mobile subscriber information. IT would show that the device used towers located in New Canaan at several times, including late on the night of Dec. 12 on Valley Road and at both the Waveny Water Tower and Country Club Road on Dec. 13, the affidavit said. It hit towers “within the immediate vicinity” of the burglaries on Lost District Drive and Hicock Road, Coughlin noted.
GPD also obtained security footage from a Home Depot in Port Chester, N.Y. that showed the suspect and another man purchasing crowbars, long screwdrivers, flashlights and batteries across three visits on Oct. 27, Nov. 14 and Dec. 13, according to the arrest warrant application.
They are items “commonly utilized in residential burglaries for prying windows, defeating locking mechanisms and operating in the dark so as not to turn on any lights in a residence,” Coughlin said in the application.
Meanwhile, New Canaan Police canvassed the Lost District Drive neighborhood and found that a security camera on a gate just 200 feet from the victim’s house showed a black G Wagon with a silver front bumper traveling east (toward the burglarized home) on Dec. 13, the affidavit said. The same “dark, boxy” vehicle could be seen caught on LPRs and security cameras in the afternoon.
Coughlin said that based on the “consistent M.O. observed across multiple burglaries; the repeated presence of a rental vehicle associated with [the arrested man] within the relevant timeframe of those burglaries; surveillance video depicted [the arrested man] and the, at this time unknown, co-conspirator purchasing tools commonly used in residential burglaries, call detail records demonstrating that the cellular telephone associated with [the arrested man] utilized cellular infrastructure servicing the areas of each burglary during the offense windows,” that the man is guilty of burglary, larceny and criminal mischief.
On March 23, NCPD went to state Superior Court in Stamford to serve the active arrest warrant on the man (already arrested by Greenwich Police, in January, on 17 charges).
He was held on $100,000 bond and scheduled to appear the same day. His arraignment now is scheduled for May 6, Connecticut Judicial Branch records show.