An Arlington resident on the county’s western section of Wilson Blvd had three modern life essentials — an iPhone, Macbook and eyeglasses — stolen from his or her home last week.
The theft occurred early Friday morning. From this week’s Arlington County crime report:
BURGLARY, 150401011, 5900 block of Wilson Boulevard. Between 1:00 and 5:30 am on May 1, an unknown subject(s) entered a residence and stole an iPhone 6, MacBook Pro and eyeglasses. There is no suspect(s) description.
Police are investigating an unusual home burglary in Cherrydale.
The break-in occurred this past weekend, sometime between Friday evening and Saturday morning. Nothing was taken from the home — on the 1600 block of N. Randolph Street — instead, someone positioned the two kitchen sink faucets so they were over the countertop, then turned the water on and fled the scene.
The house was being renovated at the time, according to police. An electrician came to the house Saturday morning and discovered a flooded basement and water pouring in from the ceiling.
It was a scene reminiscent of the “wet bandits” from the movie Home Alone.
“They had quite a bit of water in the basement of the residence,” Arlington County Police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck told ARLnow.com. “It definitely caused significant damage to the home.”
Water damage to the kitchen, basement, laundry room, main bathroom and ceiling has been estimated at $15,000, Sternbeck said.
The investigation into the crime is “ongoing,” according to Sternbeck, but police are looking into the possibility that the perpetrator was a disgruntled employee recently fired from the renovation job.
(Updated at 2:20 p.m.) A burglar made off with 200 pounds of meat between Friday night and Saturday morning, just before the Arlington Food Assistance Center was set to give out its weekly meals to families in Nauck.
AFAC dropped off its usual delivery on Friday night at at 2229 Shirlington Road, at the Bonder and Amanda Johnson Community Development Corporation, to be distributed to families on Saturday, AFAC Executive Director Charles Meng told ARLnow.com. At some point overnight, according to Meng and police reports, a burglar entered the building and stole about 200 pounds of meat. There is no suspect description.
“Chicken, fish, hot dogs and dried beans were stolen,” Meng said this morning. “We quickly replaced that so that the distribution could go on the next morning. It’s unfortunate, but it’s more of a case where somebody saw an opportunity and saw some food and took it. I suspect it was someone who was more in need of food than anything else.”
Meng said the food was being held in an office with computers and other electronic equipment, none of which was stolen. Considering AFAC delivers more than 80,000 pounds of food a week, Meng did not seem concerned with the theft.
“Two hundred pounds is going to cost us $200 or so,” Meng said. “We have the backup supplies to replace it. In our mind, the thing we want to do is make sure our clients get served. That’s our first objective. We deal with other matters after that.”
AFAC’s objective continues to be strained as the group struggles to meet the ever-increasing demand of Arlington’s hungry families. Meng said AFAC served a record 2,230 families last month and he’s projecting AFAC will exceed its food budget by $150,000 for the second straight year.
AFAC is serving 100 new families each month, Meng said, and he doesn’t anticipated the trend reversing itself anytime soon.
“We put in a request to the county for additional funding,” he said. “Right now their funding amounts to 6.8 percent of what it takes to operate AFAC. They’re getting a fantastic deal, they’re getting an 1,100 percent return on their dollar in one year. I hope they understand to keep this organization running and helping this community, some additional support is needed.”
The Arlington County Police Department is looking for a man suspected of breaking into a Lee Highway gas station over the weekend.
Police say the man entered the gas station Sunday night, stole cash and caused damage to the business before fleeing. He escaped, but was caught in the act on a surveillance camera.
Anyone with information about the suspect is asked to call police. From an ACPD press release:
The Arlington County Police Department’s Burglary/Larceny Unit is asking for the public’s assistance in identifying and locating a suspect involved in a burglary incident over the weekend at an Exxon Gas Station.
The suspect broke into the gas station, located in the 4700 block of N. Lee Highway, shortly after 8:00 p.m. on January 18, 2015. The lone suspect was captured on surveillance video causing damage to the business before stealing the cash register from behind the counter. He fled with the register and an undisclosed amount of money.
The subject is described as a black male in his 30-40s and was wearing a dark leather jacket, tan pants and black beanie skull cap.
If anyone has information on the identity and/or whereabouts of this individual, please contact Detective James Stone of the Arlington County Police Department’s Burglary/Larceny Unit at 703.228.4245 or at [email protected]. To report information anonymously, contact the Arlington County Crime Solvers at 866.411.TIPS (8477).
Arlington County Police are trying to solve the case of the missing vino.
Cops say 100 bottles of wine were reported missing at a divorcing couple’s house in the Waycroft-Woodlawn neighborhood on Monday. The wine, worth about $5,000, disappeared at some point between September and November, said the female half of a couple.
“The male half denied any knowledge or involvement in the missing wine,” police said. “There were no signs of forced entry.”
From this week’s Arlington County crime report:
BURGLARY, 141201025, 4600 block of 13th St N, On 12/1/14 at 1242 hours, the female half of a divorcing couple told police she believed her estranged husband entered the marital home when she was not present and stole approximately 100 bottles of wine, valued at approximately $5000.00, sometime between 9/23/14 and 11/28/14. The male half denied any knowledge or involvement in the missing wine. There were no signs of forced entry.
A homeowner in the East Falls Church area encountered a pair of burglars in his or her home Monday afternoon. The burglars fled, but not before taking numerous valuables.
From this week’s Arlington County crime report:
BURGLARY, 140929045, 6400 block of N. Washington Boulevard. At 3:15 pm on September 29, as a residence was being burglarized, a homeowner confronted the subjects and they fled on foot. Numerous items of value were taken. Suspect one is described as a black male in his twenties, approximately 6’0″ tall and 170 lbs. He was wearing a black wool cap and jeans at the time of the incident. Suspect two is described as a black male in his twenties and approximately 5’9″ tall. He was wearing a black long sleeve plaid shirt and had short, cropped hair.
Also this week, someone smashed windows on 11 cars and stole various belongings in an apartment parking garage in Rosslyn.
LARCENY FROM AUTO (series), 140924008, 1800 block of N. Oak Street. Between 12:40 am and 3 am on September 24, an unknown subject(s) entered a parking garage and smashed the front passenger side window of at least 11 vehicles and had various items stolen. There is no suspect(s) description.
The rest of the crime report, after the jump. All named suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty.
Arlington Tied for Lowest Unemployment in Va. — Though it once held the title by itself, Arlington is now tied for the lowest jobless rate in Virginia. Arlington and the city of Falls Church both had a jobless rate of 3.2 percent in April. [InsideNova]
Police Release Photos of Burglary Suspect — The Arlington County Police Department has released surveillance photos of a suspect accused of stealing a laptop computer from an office in Ballston. [Arlington County]
CNBC Broadcasts from Crystal City — CNBC broadcast a live shot from Crystal City yesterday morning. The network’s real estate reporter, Diana Olick, profiled the new $50 million Crystal Tech Fund, its collaborative workspace and founder Paul Singh. [CNBC]
Arlington Was Home to the Original Twitter — Arlington residents had access to Twitter as early as the 1950s. Well, perhaps not all residents — mostly Henry Clay Elementary School students. Twitter was the name of the Clarendon-based school’s newspaper, copies of which are now available for review at Arlington Central Library. [Preservation Arlington]
Rockville Gets Its Own Remy — Local comedian-rapper Remy now has some regional competition for his Arlington Rap. An artist going by the name “Rockville Slim” has created a “Rockville Rap.” [Washington City Paper]
Early Monday morning, Rodney P. Hunt’s home was broken into.
This normally would not be considered a noteworthy event outside of Hunt’s family and friends — burglaries happen every day in Arlington and every minute around the country.
Hunt’s house, however, was third-priciest home in the D.C. area as of May 2012. Located on Chain Bridge Road near the border with McLean, the 23,000 square foot home has an indoor basketball court, two-lane bowling alley, 15-car garage and sits on a cliff over the Potomac River. It was featured in 2010 on MTV Teen Cribs with Hunt’s son, Bradley.
Hunt is the former president and CEO of RS Information Systems, which he said he sold for $1.2 billion. He woke up to the sound of shattered glass at 4:45 a.m. — several windows in his entryway were broken — and went downstairs to find a man in his foyer and a woman he recognized sitting in the passenger seat of a black Nissan Altima in his gated driveway.
“It was pretty scary,” Hunt said as he, a police officer, a detective and an ARLnow.com reporter walked through his Mediterranean-style mansion. “I ran after the guy thinking I was a police officer. I wish I had called Arlington police when it happened.”
Hunt would call the police just after noon on Monday. The woman in the car, he said, was an assistant he saw the day before. Her name is Stacy, but she went by “Princess,” and she had asked him for a paycheck two days early — a request he refused to grant. He wasn’t sure what, if anything, was stolen, but said it looked like the burglars got away with some crystal ware.
Wearing a red “Ride or Die” T-shirt, he took ARLnow.com on an impromtu tour of his expansive home — to the basketball court he built for his son, Bradley (who also raps as Kid Named Breezy); the bowling alley he built and named after his father who once bowled a perfect game; the special garage-within-a-garage where he keeps the Nissan Maxima his wife bought him before she was killed by a drunk driver in 1993.
He says the house has fireplaces that were once owned by John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill.
After it was featured on MTV, the house has gained notoriety for less positive reasons. It was scheduled to be sold at auction in September 2012 when the Washington Post reported Hunt owed Bank of America almost $10 million, but it was taken off the auction block after Hunt convinced the bank he could pay. It was back on the foreclosure market in early 2013, according to Washington Exec, but Hunt is still listed as the property’s owner, according to Arlington County’s property database.
Despite the coverage the home has received, Hunt said it’s the first time it has been broken into since he bought the property in 2003. Asked whether he was more surprised that the house was broken into, or whether it’s the first time it had been broken into, Hunt said it was an easy question.
“That it was broken into at all,” he said, launching into a description of the estate’s extensive security features.
The property has two gates, an elaborate security and alarm system — which Hunt said he forgot to turn on after returning late from watching basketball at a sports bar Sunday night — and has a steep hill entrance to the property.
“That’s just crazy,” he said of the boldness of the break-in.
A Nintendo gaming system was stolen from a home in the Douglas Park neighborhood on Saturday.
According to this week’s Arlington County crime report, the suspect seemingly made a clean getaway.
BURGLARY, 140301049, 3500 block of S. 15th Street. Between 11 am and 7 pm on March 1, an unknown suspect(s) entered a victim’s residence and stole a Nintendo gaming system. There is no suspect(s) description.
A locksmith helped an alleged burglar break into an Arlington Heights home early last Friday, according the Arlington County Police Department.
The suspect called a locksmith to open the house on the 3300 block of 5th Street S. After the locksmith allowed him to gain entry, the suspect rummaged through drawers to look for working keys and identification, said police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck.
“That set off an internal alarm for the locksmith, who said he was going to contact ACPD if the suspect didn’t show proof he lived at the residence,” Sternbeck told ARLnow.com. “That’s when the suspect fled on foot.”
The suspect did not take anything from the house, and the house’s occupants — who were not home at the time — were notified and the locks were changed, Sternbeck said. Sternbeck added that it was the first time since he’s been at the police department that he’d heard of a burglar calling a locksmith in an attempt to break into a house.
This week’s Arlington County crime report contains a number of burglaries.
Police managed to arrest three suspects during one of the burglaries, which took place in an apartment complex community room. From the crime report:
BURGLARY, 2900 block of S. Glebe Road. On November 17 at 12:50am, a witness reported three individuals breaking into a community room. The three subjects were apprehended inside the community room in possession of marijuana, burglarious tools, and a stolen credit card. The subjects were all charged with Burglary, Possession of Burglarious Tools, Credit Card Theft, Credit Card Fraud, and Possession of Marijuana. The subjects were identified as Edwin Hercules-Torres, 21, of Alexandria, VA, Soami Salmeron, 22, of Alexandria, VA, and Jose Depena-Echevarria, 19, of Alexandria, VA.
