By GABRIEL GOODWIN
Sunday Times Newspapers
ALLEN PARK — Police arrested a 17-year-old Ecorse man in connection with an attempted break-in and a separate incident which occurred 30 minutes apart Feb. 22.
The attempted break-in was reported about 2:30 a.m. in the 8900 block of Ruth Avenue. The homeowner called police after his wife heard the sound of glass breaking.
The wife told police she woke up, saw a motion light in the backyard on, and yelled at the man as he was running from the house.
Officers searched the property and found a door with a broken window, police said, but the door had not been opened. The officers also found two window screens which police said were taken off two separate windows in an attempt to get into the house.
During the investigation of the incident, officers received a call of another burglary in progress about 3 a.m. in the 9600 block of Quandt.
The officer who responded to the scene first said he was searching the area and saw a man – wearing black pants, a black shirt, and carrying a black backpack – begin running from a driveway four houses down.
Some of the officers investigating the scene on Ruth Avenue left to assist with the second break-in complaint. The officer who spotted the man contacted the assisting officers and notified them of his attempt to chase the man on foot.
He also noted the man dropped a “white bar” in a driveway as he ran south on Quandt.
Police said the man continued on Quandt then went west on Maylawn Avenue and south on Becker Avenue. The man dropped his backpack, police said, and cut through a backyard on Becker. The officer radioed his location to assisting officers and said he believed the man was heading west toward Carter.
The assisting officers set up a perimeter on Carter, located the man, and chased him through several backyards on Carter, police said, before he went onto Manor. Police chased the man into the 9600 block of Manor before catching him.
Officers ordered the man to stop several times, but they said the man refused and continued to flee. An officer had to take the man to the ground and put his knee into the man’s back to gain control of his hands for the arrest.
The man was handcuffed and secured in the back of a patrol vehicle. He was searched by officers, police said, and a pocket knife and two flashlights were found in his coat pocket.
The man told police he ran because he had the knife and knew he violated curfew. Officers found the backpack he dropped on Becker and searched it, police said, and they found several pill bottles belonging to different Lincoln Park women.
Police said the backpack also contained $10.32 in loose change, a $2 bill, a Mexico $500 bill, two Wyandotte Savings Bank coins, 17 pieces of costume jewelry, a key, dog leash and a pack of cigarettes. Officers noted the man was wearing three pairs of gloves. He told police he threw the backpack down because the items did not belong to him.
Officers identified the man and arrested him for the attempted break-ins, resisting arrest and possessing stolen property.
The “white bar” also was found and was determined to be a white curtain rod – which the owner of the house on Quandt put in his window so he could hear someone attempting to break-in his home – and was taken into evidence along with the man’s shoes.
The shoes were compared it to prints at the house on Ruth Avenue and three other houses – in the 9600 block of Ruth, in the 1800 block of Champaign Road and in the 1400 block of Philomene Street. Police said the sole’s design and shoe size fit “perfectly” within the footprints left at those locations.
Officers also notified the Lincoln Park Police Department about the pill bottles. Those addresses were believed to be broken into as well.