Man in Custody Linked to Years-Old Robbery

This is a story about how fate and a little luck may have solved a crime the police had let go five long years ago.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles police arrested Gilbert Aragon of Granada Hills, intending to book him for an alleged parole violation.

By the time the day was over, though, Aragon was in jail on a completely different charge: receiving stolen property from a years-old burglary.

In an incredible twist, a jailer who had been asked to hold a bag of Aragon’s personal property recognized his own long-lost pocketknife among the suspect’s things.

“When we got back from processing [Aragon], the jailer was looking at the knife,” said Det. Tony Foti, one of the arresting officers.

“It was taken from a burglary at my house,” the jailer, civilian officer Larry Brummett, told Foti.

The 48-year-old Aragon, it turned out, lives just blocks from Brummett in Granada Hills, in a 1960s-era bomb shelter.

Aragon was charged with possession of stolen property, a felony--but not until the two men engaged in a brief standoff over ownership of the knife.

Aragon, Foti said, said he didn’t know what Brummett was talking about.

But Brummett insisted that if opened, the knife would prove to have one shaved blade and another that was broken off.

He was right.