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Sergeant credited for burglary arrests || 911 AUDIO
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The police chief also credited a boy for remaining calm and giving police a good description of the getaway car.
By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
WARREN — Police Chief Tim Bowers credited Sgt. Jeff Cole for playing a correct “hunch” that led to the arrest of two of three men who reportedly ordered a 12-year-old boy to lie on the floor while they robbed his Westwood Drive Northwest house.
When the boy called 911 at a little before 3 p.m. Wednesday, he told a dispatcher that he had just been robbed by three men in an older, metallic-red car. The men took a television, video-game systems, credit cards and jewelry.
Officers on duty went into search mode. Cole left the police station, where he serves as a detective, public information officer and internal- affairs investigator, and headed to the Hampshire House Apartments on Fifth Street Southwest.
There, he saw a red 1990 Buick. Two men were getting out who matched the description the boy had given the 911 operator.
Cole and Sgt. Greg Hoso detained the two men — Shon L. Thompson, 20, of Fifth Street Southwest, and O’Mearo L. Beaver, 19, of Commerce Street Northwest — and found jewelry in their pockets later identified as coming from the robbery.
One of the men had a driver’s license, which belonged to the boy’s mother, in his pocket, Cole said.
Police also found several video-game systems in the car that had been taken from the house, Cole said.
Not recovered was a 40-inch television and credit cards. There also was no sign of the third man involved.
Thompson and Beaver pleaded innocent Thursday in Warren Municipal Court to charges of aggravated burglary and kidnapping, first-degree felonies punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
They are in Trumbull County jail in lieu of $250,000 bond for Thompson and $150,000 for Beaver. Their next hearing is at 10:15 a.m. next Friday.
Bowers said Cole’s experience, coupled with the boy’s calm and accurate description, were keys to finding the suspects so quickly.
“He gave helpful information very quickly,” Bowers said of the boy.
“We were thrilled to death we were able to get these guys.”
The boy told the dispatcher he was in the bathroom when he heard the door open and thought it was his mother coming home from serving as a crossing guard.
But when he came out of the bathroom, the men ordered him to lie on the floor as they gathered up valuables.
The boy was shaken but uninjured, his mother told the 911 operator. The boy’s mother came home while the boy was still on the phone talking to the 911 operator.
Police said they photographed shoe prints in the snow at the house that matched the tennis shoes Thompson was wearing.
runyan@vindy.com