Darien police will be applying for an arrest warrant for a New Haven man they’ve identified as a suspect in at least one motor vehicle burglary in town, Police Chief Duane Lovello said.
“We’re seeing car break-ins up in the Ridge Acres Road area,” Lovello told the Police Commission at a recent meeting. (Here’s a map showing the road — ignore the arrows Google puts on maps showing roads.)
“We had a couple up there,” he continued. “We also had one up near the New Canaan line. They’ve identified a suspect out of New Haven on that. We’ll be doing an arrest warrant for him shortly.”
Items recently were reported taken from motor vehicles parked overnight outside houses on Country Club Road and Stephen Mather Road, both close to the border of New Canaan.
Darien police detectives have been working with New Canaan detectives to see if they can identify the same thief in these burglaries, a Darien police spokesman has said.
On Country Club Road
Around midnight between Thursday and Friday, Dec. 10 to 11, a woman who lives on Country Club Road was making sure doors were locked around the house before going to bed and walked past a window. She noticed the interior light was on in the family’s 2010 Chevrolet Yukon sport utility vehicle.
You can see this statement on the back of Darien Police patrol cars: “LOCK YOUR CAR. EVERY TIME. EVERYWHERE.”
She turned the lights off in her house to see outside better. An individual was in the driver’s seat. She at first thought it was her husband, who she’d thought was already sleeping.
She went to look and did find him sleeping in bed, but not for long. She got him up and they both went downstairs.
But by that point, the person in the SUV was gone. When the couple went to the vehicle, they saw her phone charger on the ground next to the driver’s door and, inside, the GPS was gone (it had been secured to the windshield). From the center console, $20 was missing, and it looked like the glove box and the console had been rifled through.
The vehicle hadn’t been locked.
Stephen Mather Road
The same night that the burglary on Country Club Road took place, about a mile to the east a wallet was stolen from an SUV parked outside a home on Stephen Mather Road.
The victim went to Police Headquarters later to tell them that at 7 a.m. he noticed his wallet was missing from the center console of his 2012 Nissan Xterra, which had been left unlocked overnight.
His driver’s license and various credit cards had been in the wallet.
The same night in New Canaan
From an article published Dec. 16 by NewCanaanite.com about a burglary at the southern part of New Canaan, not far from Darien:
A Highview Terrace man at 7:10 a.m. on Dec. 10 told police that three vehicles in his driveway had been entered some time after 11 p.m. the prior night.
The glove boxes in each vehicle were open with multiple items moved around, according to a police report, though it isn’t clear what was taken.
Police are urging residents to lock their cars and remove valuables, as criminals will target vehicles during the holiday season with the prospect that goods will be left in them.