Homeowner helps catch suspect

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

DARLENE DECHELLIS WASN’T expected to be at her Canfield home Wednesday afternoon, and the man who was upstairs in her house rifling through her possessions likely knew that.

She had gone out to eat with her husband, and she was going to go on from there to work at their restaurant, DeChellis’ Italian Cafe, in New Middletown.

But she decided that first, she would swing by her Bradford Drive home and grab some deposit slips so she could go to the bank.

When she opened her garage door, she saw the door between the garage and the kitchen was open. At first, she figured her husband had left it open when they’d gone out earlier.

Then, she heard a weird noise.

“Stomping,” she said. “It stopped me in my tracks. I thought, ‘Raccoons in the attic again?’”

Her husband, she wondered — did he come back home? But his car wasn’t in the driveway.

She heard more loud noises, like a whole lot of thumping — she thought later that her mystery guest likely fell down the steps.

“He was using his cell phone,” she said, and she could hear him asking someone to come and pick him up. She would later learn that he was talking to his getaway driver, who was out in the neighborhood waiting for him.

He avoided coming into the garage to confront her, she said, and she saw him go out the back door into her yard.

Did she lock her door behind him and call the police? Not exactly.

Did she lock herself in a closet and call the police? Not even close.

“I called out the back door — ‘Hey!’” she said. “He wouldn’t look at me. I ran after him. I was dialing 911 — I couldn’t get through,” she said, figuring later that she’d kept misdialing somehow as she was chasing him.

She found him on nearby Briarcliff Drive, “walking nonchalantly.” She figures he didn’t want to attract attention. A car came and picked him up right away, she said.

But then, a ride arrived for her, too, in the form of a 17-year-old high school kid who just happened to be driving by.

“I flagged him down, and said, ‘Help me. They’ve robbed me!’ And he let me in!” she said. “I said, ‘Follow him!’”

The boy, who’s now got himself quite a story to tell to friends at school, did just as she said. He and DeChellis followed the burglar and his driver through city streets, at a safe distance, while DeChellis relayed their route to police officers through 911.

They followed the men down U.S. Route 224, then turned and followed them up Hillside Drive.

At one point, the boy noticed a gray van trying to pass them. “He passed us real fast,” DeChellis said, and they were nervous because they didn’t know if the driver of the van was an accomplice to the men they were following.

“We kept following, up to Montgomery [Drive],” she said. The gray van tried to block in the men after they left Montgomery and drove onto a side street that ended in a cul de sac, she said. But the car got around it.

Finally, six police cruisers ended the chase by stopping the car at Hilltop and Montgomery.

The gray van’s driver turned out to be an undercover cop who picked up information about the chase as he was sitting at the McDonald’s on U.S. Route 224, DeChellis said.

Was DeChellis scared?

“I didn’t think to be scared. I don’t know why — I saw his hands,” she said. “There was nothing in them. He didn’t have a gun out. I’m so happy we got him.”

She said that from the moment she started to chase the burglar, her only thought was to find out who he was so that “we wouldn’t have any more problems.”

There had been some strange occurrences in the weeks before the break-in, and even on that day.

The DeChellises’ restaurant, she said, was burglarized after the New Year’s holiday, with $1,150 in receipts stolen.

Last week, she saw footprints in the snow near the back door at her home. And Wednesday afternoon, before she and her husband went out, they got three odd phone calls — “They would just sit on the phone, then call back an hour later” — with the last one claiming to be a wrong number.

Indeed, police believe, the DeChellises’ house was staked out by someone who knew them and knew their habits well enough to predict they would not be at home Wednesday afternoon.

They are alleging that a woman named Joann Douglas, 39, of Youngstown, helped her brother-in-law John Douglas, 34, of Youngstown, and an accomplice, Richard S. Cummings, 35, also of Youngstown, plan the house burglary.

Joann Douglas was the DeChellises’ cleaning woman, and she also cleaned their restaurant. Cummings and John Douglas confessed involvement in the restaurant burglary, though they have not yet been charged, said Canfield police detective Brian McGivern.

John Douglas is being charged in Canfield with burglary and possession of criminal tools; Joann Douglas is being charged with complicity to commit burglary; and Cummings is charged with complicity and possession of criminal tools, McGivern said. They were expected to be arraigned this morning in county court in Canfield.

McGivern said there has been an increase of daytime burglaries in the county, and police are urging people to be on the watch for anything suspicious, such as strange cars circling the neighborhood.

He said police appreciate what DeChellis and the teen driver did, but for safety’s sake, they don’t advise civilians to chase after criminals.

Nonetheless, he said, “The joke around the police department is, we’re gonna make her an honorary officer.”

starmack@vindy.com