A 58-year-old man was arrested on Saturday, Nov. 7, after trying to break into a home in the 1700 block of Oak St. in Santa Monica.
At 10:20 am officers of the Santa Monica Police Department were called out to investigate a report of a the sounding of residential burglar alarm that was emanating from the property mentioned above.
When the officers arrived they spoke with a suspect who told them that he had once lived at the property and that some of his belongings were still inside.
He added that the locks had been changed after the owners of the property had attempted to evict him.
As the officers were talking with this individual other officers who had responded and had been positioned in the adjacent alley happened upon two other people who had arrived.
These people told the officers that they had gone to the location in order purchase a stereo system that had been advertised on Craigslist.
The suspect told the officers that he had simply been trying to enter the property when the alarm had been triggered.
Officers then spoke to the son of the now deceased owner of the property who told them that the suspect had been living in his van on the property in the past and had been asked to vacate the property because he had been suspected of embezzling money from the late owner.
The son added that the locks had been changed and an alarm had been installed in order to keep this man away from the property.
The officers then arrested this resident of a van in Santa Monica and he was charged with attempted burglary, vandalism and trespass. Bail was set at $50,000.
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.
