Escapee Sought in Scores of Home Break-Ins

A man who escaped from state prison seven years ago is the prime suspect in more than 100 daylight residential burglaries in North County last year, but police now worry that the thief may have once again eluded authorities by disappearing into Mexico.

Dubbed the “Bernardo Bandit,” 28-year-old Sergio Gomez has eluded San Diego police and county sheriff’s deputies while allegedly breaking into homes in North County and taking tens of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry, precious coins and expensive silver.

Most of the burglaries, which have occurred in the Rancho Bernardo and Rancho Penasquitos areas, occurred between 7 a.m. and noon, with the thief prying open a rear door or window and taking only small items--such as coins, jewelry and personal effects--that are easily concealable.

“The nature and the quantities of the crimes are such that he’s a major player up here for us,” said Lt. Mike Gillespie of the Police Department’s Northeastern Division.

Sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Mike Wittmer, based in Vista, said: “He frequents the North County area quite a bit and has a lot of ties up here. And he’s established over the years that repentance is not part of his character. He doesn’t learn from his mistakes.”

Gomez, who uses an alias of Sergio Sanchez, was serving a three-year sentence on a San Diego burglary conviction, officials said, when he vanished in December, 1982, from the Sierra Conservation Center, a medium-security state prison in the Mother Lode town of Jamestown.

Lt. Ken Casler, a state prison spokesman, said that Gomez walked away from a work project at a nearby fairgrounds and “we haven’t seen or heard from him since.”

Last January, a series of residential burglaries in North San Diego County began, with 98 occurring in the city’s northern reaches and about half a dozen more in the San Marcos and rural Escondido areas.

In more than a dozen of the cases, police said, Gomez’s fingerprints were found. A large amount of the loot, including antique rings, statues and silver that was believed stolen in the burglaries, has turned up at local pawn shops. Gomez is named in six arrest warrants, including one issued by the FBI for stealing money from a bank.

But the burglaries abruptly stopped in early November, and police now wonder if Gomez, who is described as having close relatives and friends living both in North County and in Mexico, may have slipped across the border.

San Diego officers and sheriff’s deputies have been given detailed descriptions of Gomez, and one detective in the Police Department’s fugitive apprehension detail even keeps a case file on Gomez should he find the suspect.

“We’ve checked every place we know he’s running,” Wittmer said. “We checked prior addresses and stuff like that and put the information out to our patrol units. But even then, nothing.”

In another attempt to locate him, Officer Kelly Shay has put together a Crime Stoppers film re-enactment to be aired as public service announcements over the next two weeks on local television stations, and a reward of up to $1,000 has been posted for information leading to his arrest.

Gomez is described as Hispanic, 6 feet tall, 170 pounds, with brown hair, brown eyes, long hair and a beard.

Anyone with information is asked to call police at 235-TIPS.