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Investigators from five counties work to capture Warren man
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Brandon Welz, 29, of South Street, is facing a misdemeanor criminal trespassing charge after he was arrested Saturday for purportedly breaking into a storage building on West Market Street in Warren Township.
But Welz also faces the possibility of being charged with about 20 such offenses, thanks to a five-county investigation organized by Detective Jolene Marcello of the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office that led to Saturday’s arrest.
Marcello noticed similarities among break-ins over the past month or two involving bars and golf-course clubhouses: Surveillance video showed someone “belly crawling” – dressed in a hooded sweatshirt, mask and backpack – and stealing cash.
By looking at police reports that are shared among various counties, she realized similar break-ins were occurring in Trumbull, Portage, Ashtabula and Lake counties, so she contacted detectives in the other counties, and they started to work together.
The Geauga County Sheriff’s Office got a good tip from Mulligan’s Pub on U.S. Route 422 in Geauga County after the pub posted surveillance video on its Facebook page showing the suspect committing a break-in there in late April.
Someone viewing the Facebook page identified Welz, then Marcello and fellow detective Maj. Thomas Stewart and personnel from the Trumbull Ashtabula Group Law Enforcement Task Force began to conduct surveillance on Welz. Law enforcement from all five counties also began to watch for him.
He typically struck after the bars closed, and he usually took cash, so the bars were notified to deposit cash into the bank rather than leave it in the bar overnight, Marcello said.
Detectives were conducting surveillance on Welz early Saturday when he was observed trespassing into a storage building at 6783 West Market St. next to the Lucky Inn tavern, where Welz was arrested, Marcello said.
Police reports from Geneva, Colebrook, Andover, Orwell, Cortland and other areas now list Welz as a suspect in various break-ins. Marcello said Welz is a suspect in eight break-ins from Trumbull County in the past few months and roughly 20 from the five-county area.
He’s been booked into the Trumbull County Jail about a dozen times since 2004 and was convicted in 2011 of receiving stolen property. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison in January 2014 for forgery and receiving stolen property, according to court records.