Before Burglary, Someone Was Poking Around

A man in a baseball cap played an unwitting starring role in a video in an Edgewood neighborhood driveway — shortly before thousands of dollars worth of jewelry and electronics disappeared.

What was he doing in that driveway?

Click on the play arrow and take a guess.

An Edgewood landlord had his own guess. He forwarded the video to the cops because it coincided with a break-in.

The video footage came from a homeowner who has around-the-clock surveillance cameras on his property. It showed the male visitor in the baseball cap, shorts and T‑shirt checking out the street, then walking up and down the driveway around 8:30 a.m. Monday.

Right before that the man in the cap had rung the bell at a house directly behind the one with the surveillance cameras. A woman answered the door. The man asked if she needed anyone to do yard work.

The woman said no. Soon after, she left for work; no one else was left in her home.

Here’s what happened next, according to her landlord:

Hours later, the neighbor with the surveillance cameras checked a web feed of the footage from his cameras back home while he was working. He saw the man with the baseball cap poking around. He feared the intruder may have broken into his garage.

He came home to discover instead that a gate was ajar linking his property to the house behind his. He contacted the woman living there, the same woman who had answered the doorbell earlier that morning. She returned home from work to find a kitchen screen sliced and pulled up. An intruder had apparently gotten in that way, then left with an estimated $6,000 worth of electronics and jewelry, including a Wii console and a watch.

The cops were called to the scene. Police spokesman Officer David Hartman said the case remains under investigation; cops have made no arrests as of yet.

Pursuit Of Happiness?

Later Monday, in a separate incident across town, an amorous backseat encounter ended up in a police chase, a crash, and an arrest.

Here’s what happened, according to police spokesman Hartman (mostly in his words, in quotation marks):

Block watch members called police at 10:50 p.m. to report ​“an occupied suspicious Honda” parked on Quinnipiac Avenue.

“Officer David Parker arrived first and spotted the Honda. Its two occupants were in the back seat. When one of them saw Officer Parker, he hopped into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and sped off.

“He sped past Officers David Totino and William Gargone as they entered the complex. The officers turned to follow. Officer Totino directed the dispatcher to notify North Haven Police that the recklessly driven Honda was headed toward their town on Quinnipiac Avenue.

“It didn’t make it that far. The car struck the curbstone as the
operator tried negotiating a curve in the road at Middletown Avenue. The three officers ran to the car and tried opening the driver’s door.

“The operator drove the car in reverse, nearly missing Officer Gargone. The door was opened and the Officers
struggled to free the operator’s hands from the steering wheel as the female passenger shouted, ​‘Stop Adam! Stop it!’

“Her pleas were useless, as the man fought his apprehension. Officer Gargone gave the man a shot of pepper spray to the face.”

The driver, who’s 26 and lives in Hartford, ended up in handcuffs, charged with a variety of motor vehicle and interfering charges.

“The female passenger told Officer Gargone she and [the driver] were intimately engaged in the back seat when officers arrived. She said she had relatives who lived there, but wasn’t sure where.”

The driver, meanwhile, ​“apologized to the officers. He said he ​‘reverted back to the days when he was in trouble,’ and that’s why he fled.”

“The car wasn’t registered,” Hartman noted. ​“The female retrieved her clothes from the car and waited for a ride home as the car was towed away.”