A 34-year-old man who was seen going into mailboxes on Linden Avenue on Saturday was later spotted by a police officer, who chased him in downtown Noroton Heights and used a taser gun in order to arrest him, police said.
Darien police gave this account (with accusations not proven in court) of how Jonathan McIver was arrested:
Jonathan McIver, 34, accused Saturday, Jan. 2, of stealing mail from 17 Darien mailboxes and from one in Rowayton.
At 6:22 p.m., a Purchase, N.Y. man called police to say a man going through various mailboxes on the street.
The caller, who was waiting to pick up his children from a home on Linden Avenue, gave police a very detailed description of what the man looked like: a black man with wire glasses; wearing dark pants; a dark, hooded sweatshirt and orange sneakers.
The man was last seen on Hollow Tree Ridge Road near the entrance to Avalon Darien, across the street from the Noroton Heights Railroad Station.
Police looked but didn’t see the suspect at first — until an officer driving through the south side of the train station parking lot spotted a man matching the description on the platform on the other side of the tracks.
Before getting out of the patrol car, the officer activated and wore a microphone with a wireless connection to the car’s camera, then walked up to the man, whom he recognized as Jonathan McIver, 34, of Queens, N.Y.
The officer had previously met McIver, who, police said, was previously panhandling in Darien. The officer told McIver that he matched the description of a man seen going through various nearby mailboxes.
Asked whether he had identification with him, McIver indicated two bags on a nearby bench — a black Adidas backpack and a Walgreens plastic shopping bag. McIver gave the officer a New York City identification card.
The officer saw a large manila envelope with a large “P” on it, which he recognized as a Paypal package. McIver allowed the officer to look it over. It had the name of a High Ridge Road resident on it, and the address. The officer asked McIver to put his hands behind his back.
At that point, McIver ran off and the officer ran after him. McIver jumped over a handrail and fell on the ground. The officer took out a taser as McIver got up and started running toward Heights Road. The officer shot the taser gun, but only one of the two hooked leads made contact with McIver (and that one only penetrated his clothes, not his skin, police later determeined).
McIver ran across Heights Road to the parking lot of Glen Liquors, where a father saw the commotion and gathered up his two young sons who were sitting on benches outside the store, bringing them inside.
McIver fell on the ground and the officer got on top of him, threatening to taser him in the back unless he put his hands behind his back. (The taser wouldn’t shock the officer as well as long as he didn’t put himself between the two hooked leads. )
More officers arrived at the scene. Darien EMS-Post 53 was also called in because the taser gun had been fired, but with the taser only on McIver’s clothes, it was determined that no medical help was needed.
McIver, a resident of Grand Central Parkway in Queens, was taken to Darien Police Headquarters, where he admitted that he took the mail he was caught with. He told police he started looking through numerous mailboxes in Rowayton, then went to Noroton and Noroton Heights, doing the same thing.
Among the mail from 17 Darien homes, police found medication that didn’t have McIver’s name on it, a zip drive that belonged to a resident of Edgerton Street, two checks in the name of a Greenwich resident, an Amazon Prime card in someone else’s name, and an “electric screen” that didn’t have identifying packaging information on it.
McIver was charged with 17 counts of sixth-degree larceny and resisting arrest. His bond was set at $5,000 and a court date of Jan. 12, 2016 if he made bail.
The mail was turned over to the Post Office for redelivery, and McIver was turned over to Norwalk police in connection with mail found on him with a Rowayton Avenue address.