Sheriff officials investigating La Cañada Flintridge residential burglary

[UPDATE 7/22 1:24 p.m.] Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies are investigating a residential burglary that took place on the 4700 block of La Cañada’s Vineta Avenue sometime between 8 p.m. the night of July 8 and 7:30 a.m. the next morning.

The incident is the only home break-in to occur so far this month but follows a busy June, in which officials saw nine burglaries and attempted burglaries at homes in La Cañada Flintridge, according to sheriff’s reports and online crime mapping service crimemapping.com.

In the case of the Vineta Avenue home, a man reported to deputies from the Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s Station on July 9 that his ex-wife’s residence had been broken into while she was away on a weeklong trip to Chicago. Their daughter had been staying with the man while her mother was away, and the two of them discovered the crime at around 7:30 a.m. when they’d arrived at the location to pick up some clothes.

When they entered the residence, they noticed all the bedrooms in the house had been ransacked and closet doors left open. They also discovered that one bedroom window had been cranked open and its mesh screen slashed.

The daughter had been to the house the night before to feed the family cat, and nothing had been disturbed at that time. She told deputies she’d locked and secured the home before leaving.

Deputies observed that none of the computers or electronic devices inside the home had been taken or damaged. The daughter was unable to tell what, if any, of her mother’s belongings had been stolen and knew there was a safe in the home but did not know where it was located. A phone call to the homeowner revealed the safe was in the closet of her bedroom office, and that she kept documents and a diamond ring inside it.

In a walk-through, deputies saw several ransacked rooms and strewn jewelry boxes with the pieces still inside them. The open window, in a bedroom on the west side of the house, was open about 20 inches, a deputy observed, and its screen was torn out. That was determined to be the intruder’s point of entry. An open door on the north side of the home, which leads from the outside to bathrooms and ultimately the house, was determined to be the point of exit.

In a recent interview on public safety, La Cañada Flintridge Mayor Dave Spence commented on the relatively high numbers of property crimes, given the city’s historically low violent crime rate, encouraging people to take advantage of the sheriff’s department free vacation watch service when they know they’re going to be out of town.

“The vacation watch is an extremely good idea. If you’re going to be on vacation, call the (station) and tell them — that’s one thing that could probably help reduce property crimes,” Spence advised. “Another thing is telling your neighbors you’re going to be gone.”