Crime Report: Revolver stolen from business owner

La Cañada Flintridge

Jan. 19

Burglary, residential: 900 block of Milmada Drive. Following up on notice of a burglar alarm, deputies arrived at the residence to find the homeowner standing outside awaiting their response. The deputies searched the perimeter of the property and noticed that the glass pane in a rear door had been smashed. Inside, it appeared that nothing had been disturbed and no items were missing. The deputies surmised that the motion-detecting alarm system had discouraged the suspect(s) from going forward into the house after it was tripped.

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Jan. 20

Burglary, business: 1100 block of Foothill Boulevard (See’s Candies). The store manager reported that sometime between 9 p.m. Jan. 19 and 9:10 a.m. Jan. 20, someone had entered the business, pried open a cash drawer that contained no money, pulled on an electrical device attached to the safe and moved aside the door to the attic.

There were no signs of entry and the door had been locked when the manager arrived that morning. She said all keys to the store were accounted for and none of the key holders were suspected because they all knew there would be no cash in the register.

Burglary, business: 1000 block of Foothill Boulevard (AIA Insurance). A man reported that when he arrived at work at about 9:20 a.m. Jan. 20 and parked in the lot behind the business, he noticed that the bathroom window had been smashed. Its screen was on the ground and the metal bars that had covered the window were pried away from the wall.

When he entered the building, he saw pry marks on the door jamb and on the inside of the door. On the floor was the locking mechanism for the door’s double-keyed deadbolt. He found drawers and cabinet doors were hanging open. A locked desk in the owner’s office had been pried open and items were left strewn on the floor.

Only one item was determined to be missing, a revolver belonging to the business owner, who had left it in an unlocked cabinet. He said it was not registered in his name and he could not provide a model number or serial number.

The responding deputy posited that the suspect(s) had entered through the bathroom window, then exited through the door, which had been pried open from the inside.

Attempted burglary, business: 1000 block of Foothill Boulevard (Min’s Kitchen). A woman reported that sometime between 11 p.m. on Jan. 19 and 9 a.m. Jan. 20 someone using a prying tool damaged a gate, a heavy security screen door, a stucco wall and a storage unit while apparently trying to break into the business.

Jan. 21

Petty theft: 4400 block of Chevy Chase Drive. A woman reported that when she was inside a preschool for a brief visit, from about 9 a.m. to 9:20 a.m., someone entered her unlocked vehicle in the school’s parking lot and took a Gap tote bag from the passenger’s side floorboard.

Items missing along with the tote bag included a wallet containing currency, a California driver’s license, a debit card, numerous gift cards, headphones and a key chain holding eight keys.

A witness reported seeing, at about 9:05 a.m., what she considered a suspicious-looking male black adult entering a beige car, then driving slowly around the parking lot before exiting onto Chevy Chase Drive. The witness said she’s been a parent at that school since 2012 and had never seen the man on the campus before.

Grand theft: 2100 block of Foothill Blvd. A store manager reported that at about 8 p.m. on Jan. 4, a man who regularly frequents the business, entered the store and, unnoticed at the time, reached behind the customer service counter and took a box containing an iMac laptop computer. The theft didn’t come to light until another customer visited the store on Jan. 18 to inquire about the status of a package he’d been expecting. The store’s manager, studying surveillance video, saw the crime unfold there and notified the Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s Station.

Grand theft: 5000 block of Commonwealth Avenue. A woman noticed on Sept. 16, 2015 that jewelry was missing from the top dresser drawer of her room. Her mother told responding deputies that she’d hired a handyman in September 2014 and that he’d done small jobs around the house.

Within a couple of months of his arrival at the property, the mother began noticing items missing, including new bath towels, pumpkin decorations, an electric drill and a sandpaper drill. She fired him in 2015 and no items have gone missing from the property since that time. Her daughter said the handyman had worked unsupervised in her room in August 2015 to hang two wall frames.

The missing pieces of jewelry include a gold and diamond Tiffany pendant, a platinum and diamond pendant and a platinum and diamond ring. When asked why she waited so long to report the thefts, the daughter replied that she had continued searching for them in the hopes they would turn up.

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Carol Cormaci, carol.cormaci@latimes.com

Twitter: @CarolCormaci