Crime & Safety
Highlands Burglary Suspect Charged
For weeks, someone managed to slip in to homes while residents were there and found their car keys on kitchen counters. He's jailed and facing charges after being spotted in the act and chased down.
An 18-year-old Milwaukee man has been charged with burglary and auto theft in a string of break-ins in and around the Washington Highlands neighborhood.
While only one Wauwatosa burglary and one auto theft were charged, another burglary count in Milwaukee was filed and another Tosa burglary was read in to the record, according to police.
Court records say Cassius R. Thomas, 18, of Milwaukee committed break-ins in Milwaukee on April 16 and in Wauwatosa on July 21, and that on July 21 he also stole a car after grabbing the keys from inside the Highlands home he entered.
Thomas could be charged with more crimes as the investigation continues, as he is a suspect in several more cases. In at least four instances, homes in the Highlands were entered on Sundays while the residents were home, with car keys and sometimes other property snatched off kitchen counters before the cars were stolen.
Such crimes happened on June 30, twice on July 14 and finally on Sunday evening when Thomas ran afoul of watchful citizens and the law, police say.
Sunday, in a pouring rain, Thomas was seen by a resident in the back yard of his home in the 1500 block of North 60th Street, and Thomas ran when the homeowner went out and asked him what he was doing there.
It turned out, according to the residents of the home and a police investigation, that Thomas had slipped inside the house and filched the keys to the man's car, plus $120 cash from his wife's purse while they were in the home but unaware.
A Block Watch captain on Washington Circle reported seeing Thomas running madly up the street, and a few minutes later Wauwatosa police spotted and chased him in Washington Heights, just a couple of blocks into Milwaukee.
Thomas tried to evade arrest by scaling a 6-foot fence only to find himself the target of an irate homeowner who had a .38-caliber pistol on him and fired at least four rounds to get his lasting attention.
Thomas fled and threw himself on the mercy of Tosa police officers, fearing for his life, but the the Milwaukee man who pulled his gun was released from arrest after he was deemed justified in firing.
Thomas was at latest report still in custody on $5,000 bail with a preliminary hearing set for Aug. 8.
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