Crime Report: U-Haul rental truck reportedly stolen, deputies arrest man
La Cañada Flintridge
Oct. 2
Vandalism, mailbox: 4600 block of Hillard Avenue. A maintenance man arrived at a residence at around 3 p.m. and noticed the unit’s mailbox appeared to have been tampered with and pried open. The man told deputies the box had been fine a week ago when he’d last checked the mail. A U.S. Postal Service representative, when called, said the damage had been reported and the mail delivery had been temporarily suspended.
Oct. 6
Burglary, residence: 4600 block of Alta Canyada Road. A woman left her residence at around 4:45 p.m. to take her daughter to a tutoring session, leaving a rear sliding door and kitchen window open.
When she returned home at around 5:15 p.m., she noticed her outdoor cat was inside the house. Upon further inspection, she saw the master bedroom and her son’s room had been ransacked and immediately went outside to call the police. That’s when she noticed a black male, wearing black pants and shirt and a black baseball cap backward, running from the south side walkway.
The man ran south on Alta Canyada, turning east on Flanders, where he entered a black BMW being driven by a second black male suspect. The victim got in her car and followed the BMW, which had yellow paper license plates, from Flanders to Verdugo Boulevard.
During that drive, she called 911 but was put on hold. The victim told deputies four boxes containing miscellaneous jewelry and her son’s laptop were missing. A shoe print at the scene, possibly belonging to one of the suspects, was photographed and booked into evidence.
Vandalism, mailbox: 5200 block of Alta Canyada Road. At around 3 p.m. a woman flagged down deputies and reported that someone had smashed the top of her mailbox and scratched its face about a month earlier. When asked why she’d waited so long to report the crime, the victim said deputies were unavailable to fill out a report after her first call.
Theft by access card; theft from unlocked vehicle: 4400 block of Angeles Crest Highway. A man told deputies he’d been taking a nap inside his parked 2005 Pontiac Grand Prix with the windows down and his seat reclined at about 1:15 p.m. when he heard voices. Thinking nothing of it, he opened his eyes and saw a man reaching in through the driver’s side window and steal his wallet from the center console before fleeing through the parking lot and entering a white sedan parked in a nearby alley. The vehicle fled out of view; the victim said he did not get a look at the suspect. Later, when the man called to cancel his credit cards, he learned the suspect had made unauthorized purchases at Joe’s Service Center and Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles.
Oct. 8
Petty theft, business: 1500 block of Foothill Boulevard. A store manager reported that sometime between 1 and 3 p.m., two large packages previously delivered to the business by a FedEx truck had been stolen from where they sat on the sidewalk. The packages contained assorted holiday lotions, candles, pillows and other items.
Oct. 12
Burglary, residence: 4000 block of Dover Road. A man told deputies that sometime between 5:45 and 8:10 p.m., an unknown person gained access to his home by way of an open master bedroom window and stole several items, including an elephant rifle, shotgun and nine pieces of jewelry. The victim said he’d locked all the other doors and windows before leaving. When he returned home through the rear door of the residence, he noticed the house had been ransacked. Deputies observed the window’s screen had been cut and removed, and also saw a telescope from the bedroom laying in the grass beyond a balcony. They believed the suspect may have dropped it in an attempt to leave the property. The two unloaded guns had been taken from an unlocked gun case in the bedroom’s walk-in closet, while the jewelry was taken from a family room cabinet.
La Crescenta
Oct. 2
Burglary, residence: 2600 block of Mountain Pine Drive. A woman reported that she was asleep in her upstairs bedroom at around 11:10 p.m. when she heard her front door slam shut. She walked downstairs into the living room hallway and could see that a sliding glass door in the guest room was opened and its glass smashed. The woman looked around a bit before calling the sheriff’s department, but didn’t notice anything missing. She later told deputies the house had an alarm system, but she hadn’t activated it before going to sleep. She had, however, locked the front and guest room sliding doors. The glass door was determined to be the point of entry, while the suspect was believed to have left through the front door.
Oct. 6
Identity theft: 4600 Marellen Place. A woman told deputies she’d returned home at about 5:45 p.m. the day before and checked her Apple email account to discover she had hundreds of spam emails from an unknown source. While she was on the phone holding for Apple’s customer service, she got an email notifying her that an order for two iPhones had been made on her credit card information. The woman cancelled both her credit card and the iPhone order, but on the following morning received another email informing her the iPhones were being shipped to her home.
Embezzlement: 2660 Foothill Blvd. On Aug. 4 at 3:30 p.m., 29-year-old La Crescenta man had rented a 2015 GMC pickup truck with an Arizona license plate from the U-haul store for a contractual period of five days. But an employee of the store said Aug. 9 had passed and the man had still not returned the vehicle.
A store representative called the man the following day and was told the man would bring the truck back on Aug. 11. The suspect did not return the vehicle as promised, and employees made several phone contacts with the man through Aug. 29.
On Oct. 6, a store employee filed a stolen/embezzled report for the vehicle through the sheriff’s department. Deputies visited the man’s house and saw the vehicle parked inside a garage in his gated complex. A man stepped from the garage and talked with deputies, but when learning of the reason for their visit went inside and shut the garage door.
Deputies gained access to the complex and confirmed the truck was the U-Haul rental. The suspect had damaged its paint in an attempt to remove the store’s stickers with a sander. The suspect was immediately detained pending investigation and later arrested and booked into the Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s Station.
Oct. 8
Petty theft, unlocked vehicle: 4600 block of Marellen Place. A woman reported that sometime between 5 p.m. the day before and 6 a.m. that day, someone entered her unlocked 2013 Ford Escape while it was parked in her driveway and stole a blue canvas bag containing various prescription medications as well as medical records from the front passenger seat. The suspect also took some coins from the center console and a makeup bag from the glove compartment. There were no signs of forced entry, deputies observed.
Oct. 9
Petty theft: 2300 block of Henrietta Avenue. A woman came home at around 2:15 p.m. and checked her email. She’d gotten a message that two packages had been delivered to her home by UPS at 12:30 and 1 p.m. that day, but hadn’t seen them there. She and her husband checked video surveillance footage which showed the deliveries occurring at the reported times. At 1:46 p.m., the surveillance showed “a lone suspect” with short, dark hair, wearing a dark tank top and gray looking shorts, walk up to the front door and steal the packages. The victim said the packages contained refrigerator filters and checks issued by Citibank, and that she’d cancelled the checks.
Oct. 11
Grand theft: 3000 block of Alabama Street. A man reported that sometime between 9:30 p.m. the day before and 7:10 a.m. that day, someone entered his unlocked Audi A4 and stole two black Lenovo brand computers and a black USB modem from the vehicle’s trunk. The vehicle had been ransacked in the process, and the victim could not say if anything else was missing.
Montrose
Oct. 6
Theft by access card; theft of lost property: 3800 block of Park Place. A woman reported leaving her apartment at around 8:30 a.m. without noticing that she’d left her purse on a ledge beside where her car was parked. When she got to work, she realized the purse was missing and called her husband to check for it on the ledge. It was not there, and no one had attempted to contact her about finding it. When the woman called to cancel her credit cards, she learned an unknown person had used both her credit and debit cards to make purchases in Pasadena. The stolen Guess brand purse had also contained an Apple iPhone 6, a checkbook and an unspecified amount of cash.
Oct. 9
Vandalism: 2200 block of Del Mar Road. At around 3:30 p.m., a woman noticed her mailbox, as well as two others in her apartment complex, had been left wide open. All three boxes were empty, and a nearby note from the U.S. Postal Service advised someone to “call the police.” The woman’s husband said he’d seen a mail carrier at around 11:45 a.m. and noticed he did not leave any mail in the open boxes. Neighbors interviewed said they noticed the empty boxes the day before at around 5:45 p.m. Deputies observed pry marks by the lock latches of the open mail boxes, and noted in their report that the day before at 5:45 p.m., another possible petty theft from mailboxes for homes in the 2200 block of Montrose Avenue had been reported and may be related.