A 19-year-old man was arrested on Saturday, Nov. 20, shortly after being caught breaking into a vehicle in Santa Monica.
At 4:03 am officers of the Santa Monica Police Department were called out to the 1700 block of Ocean Ave. in order to investigate a report of an automobile break-in.
When the officers arrived they spoke with the victim who told them that he had returned to his locked vehicle (that had been parked in a subterranean parking lot) and that upon doing so he had noticed a male stranger sitting inside the vehicle.
The victim said that he had asked this stranger what he was doing inside the vehicle and the stranger had held up a metal grinder and a pair of board shorts and said, “I am just holding these.”
Both of the items, incidentally, belonged to the victim.
The victim said that he had then noticed that his vehicle had been ransacked and that at that moment the suspect had exited the car and ran off.
The victim gave the officers a detailed description of the suspect and this description was then circulated via radio to other officers in the area.
A few moments later this man was spotted and detained by other officers in the 2400 block of the Santa Monica Beach Bicycle Path.
The victim was transported to that location whereupon the victim positively identified the suspect as the person who had been sitting inside his vehicle holding his belongings.
The officers arrested the suspect, aged 19 and of no fixed abode, and he was later charged with burglary and a violation of probation. Bail was not granted.
Editor’s Note: These reports are part of a regular police coverage series entitled “Alert Police Blotter” (APB), which injects some minor editorial into certain police activities in Santa Monica. Not all of The Mirror’s coverage of incidents involving police are portrayed in this manner. More serious crimes and police-related activities are regularly reported without editorial in the pages of the Santa Monica Mirror and its website, smmirror.com.
