43
Cops: Heroin addicts responsible for West Side burglaries
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Police say a trio of heroin addicts is responsible for a rash of business burglaries on the Mahoning Avenue corridor since the end of June.
Detective Sgt. Michael Kawa, who is responsible for investigating property crimes on the West Side, said Thursday that they may now be branching out across the city and are suspects in the theft of air-conditioning coils atop several stores at the Lincoln Knolls plaza on McCartney Road this week.
Kawa also said police arrested a suspect trying to break into a Market Street building last week, another indication that the three are expanding the area in which they operate.
Kawa said police are now looking for a man and a woman, both white. The man is described as being about 40 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall and between 170 and 200 pounds. He did not have a description of the woman.
Kawa said some evidence is being tested by the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation for DNA and other clues.
Kawa said the last West Side burglary the three are suspected of being involved in was last week when they broke into the vacant Sparkle Market on the corner of Mahoning and Belle Vista avenues. He said the burglaries, at least on the West Side, have slowed down since the arrest of the person on Market Street last week.
Typically the burglaries are not complicated, Kawa said. He termed them “smash and grab” burglaries in which a person smashes a window, then runs inside, grabs as much as possible at one time and runs away.
He said the three had been striking between 2 and 5 a.m. He said people should be aware of a man and a woman walking with hooded sweatshirts at that hour of that morning, because that fits the clothing description of those involved in the burglaries.
Police Chief Robin Lees said extra attention is being paid to the area via extra patrols and the department’s new Community Police Unit and the officer assigned to that area.
Lees said investigators believe whoever has been committing the burglaries is sensitive to what he termed “neighborhood patterns,” and knows what times of day people are less likely to notice them.
“We feel they exploit that to their advantage,” Lees said.
Lees said there are other actions police are taking to find the suspects, but he did not want to comment on them publicly.
In the Lincoln Knolls burglary, six air-conditioning coils were reported stolen to police, who were called to the plaza about 9:10 a.m. Wednesday by a representative of a Pittsburgh management group after crews who were on the roof to fix an air-conditioning problem discovered the coils were missing. Reports said police found two coils in the woods behind the plaza and suspect someone dragged the coils from the roof to a waiting vehicle on Gluck Street.
Reports said the damage done to the plaza could run up to $70,000.