Police Reports: Resident Finds He Has a Guest In His Garage

A week doesn't go by when someone in Wauwatosa does not report that someone has entered or broken into their garage and taken something away.

But one Tosa homeowner recently found things appearing in his garage – things that definitely did not belong there.

A resident of the 8900 block of Stickney Avenue reported to police June 17 that over the past week he had noticed some items in his detached garage that did not belong to him and upon further review and investigation believed that some stranger had been living there.

He found several bottles of urine beside his car, and also a cell phone, a pocketknife, some gift cards and a dark green winter coat.

The gift cards, one from 2008, were either outdated or never activated, and provided no clue to their owner.

Police said that the coat was “soiled, wet and unsanitary,” and finding nothing of evidentiary value about it, they threw it away.

The cell phone, however, proved to have been reported stolen in a car break-in in Milwaukee in late May.

Police suspect that the trespasser may be a 47-year-old homeless man they had field-interviewed in the same area in May, and they are seeking him for questioning.

The homeowner said the service door handle on his garage was broken and could not be locked. Police advised him to put a new doorknob and deadbolt on the door, which he did that very evening.

In other recent incidents:

Wednesday

A resident of the 9900 block of Argonne Drive reported her rear license plate stolen. She was not sure just when or where it was taken.

A resident of the 6400 block of Washington Circle reported that overnight someone had entered her unlocked car in her driveway and stolen cash she kept in the center console.

Tuesday

A resident of the 8600 block of Ravenswood Circle called police at 7 p.m. to report that she had found a black fleece jacket and a black leather satchel in her otherwise empty garbage cart, and she correctly believed them to have been stolen. Papers in the satchel led police to their owner, a Franksville man, who said his work van had been broken into earlier in the day near West Wisconsin Avenue and North 92nd Street, and he had not yet gotten around to reporting the crime.

Last Monday

At 7:40 p.m., a known suspect identified as a 29-year-old West Allis man tried to pass a fraudulent prescription for 90 Oxycodone pills at , 7520 Blue Mound Rd. He presented a valid driver’s license, and video footage later revealed that it was in fact his correct ID. The pharmacist said he immediately suspected a forgery when he looked at the prescription, and the doctor listed on it confirmed that he had not written it. Police were attempting to contact the suspect.

At 7:22 p.m., police arrested two Milwaukee boys, one 17 and one 15, for disorderly conduct after witnesses reported they had been harassing an older man on the sidewalk and street near the bus stop on the west side of North 60th Street south of West North Avenue. The manager of , 6002 W. North Ave., told police she had been watching the two boys because they appeared suspicious to her when she saw them approach a man at the bus stop and begin to lunge at him threateningly, “like a cat pouncing on its prey.” By the time police arrived, the alleged victim had gotten on a bus and left, but officers chased down the two boys, one of whom tried to hide out by running into and jumping over the counter of the Taco Bell at 5630 W. North Ave. The two boys admitted they had been harassing people along the street, including customers of McDonald’s, 6431 W. North Ave., just to shock and frighten them. Both had been stopped in December in Wauwatosa after a resident reported that they had urinated in her yard. In that incident, both were wearing bandanas around their necks, their jackets turned inside out, and one of them had a homemade weapon consisting of a padlock swung on a shoelace.

A resident of apartments, 2524 N. 124th St., called police after she and other tenants were alerted by management that their storage lockers had been broken into. Police found her padlock cut and she told them she was missing large bulk packages of toilet paper and paper towels and two folding lawn chairs and their bags. All together, 20 locks were found cut in storage units at the apartments.

At 10:35 p.m., a Racine man, the manager of , 11727 W. Dearbourn Ave., reported that after he tried to turn on the air-conditioning in the morning and it didn’t work, he found that the entire compressor unit and 10 to 12 feet of copper piping connecting it to the building had been stolen.

A Milwaukee County Parks worker reported that overnight someone had climbed on to the roof of the pool building and smashed three skylights and filled several of the bathroom vent pipes with pebbles from the roof. He said an exit sign in the lobby had also been broken, and police noted that several other incidents of vandalism had been reported there recently.