Suspect Had 'Key' Evidence of Highlands Burglaries, Police Say

An 18-year-old burglary suspect arrested Sunday evening after a chaotic chase out of the Washington Highlands, ending with a nearby resident opening fire on him, is definitely implicated in more Highlands break-ins and car thefts, according to police.

He had the evidence on him, reports say, not only of the burglary and attempted car theft he’d just committed but also of another – a car key stolen in earlier Highlands burglary.

And a chain of other evidence, including more car keys, ties him to more such crimes.

The culmination of Sunday’s incident has been widely reported, with a Milwaukee homeowner arrested and then released without charges for taking several shots with a pistol when the teenage suspect scaled a fence into his back yard while fleeing.

A man out standing in the rain

For starters, no earlier reports have mentioned that it was pouring rain when, at 5 p.m. Sunday, a man at home in the 1500 block of North 60th Street went to his kitchen to get a cup of coffee and saw a young man in his back yard, acting furtively. He was wearing a red baseball cap.

The homeowner went outside and asked the stranger what he was doing there, and the fellow took off running down his driveway. The man then noticed that one of his cars, a Toyota that had been in front of the couple’s second car, a VW, had been moved to one side.

What’s more, potted plants and patio furniture had been moved in an attempt to make room to back the Toyota out around the VW. He checked in with his wife, and they discovered the keys to the Toyota had disappeared from the kitchen – just as had car keys in several other Highlands area cases – along with $120 cash from her purse.

A few minutes later, while looking around his back yard, the homeowner spotted the suspect again from the rear of his lot. The teenager had doubled back into the Washington Highlands and was now running up Washington Circle.

At the same time, a woman at home in her study in the 6100 block of Washington Circle, right behind his home, saw out of the corner of her eye the young man running furiously up her street.

She is a neighborhood Block Watch captain. With no inkling of what had happened, she immediately dialed 911. The only description she could give was that he was young, a very fast runner, and was wearing a red baseball cap.

Within a minute, half a dozen Wauwatosa officers were descending on the east Highlands area, well aware of the string of burglaries taking place there in recent weeks.

The initial burglary victim moments later ran into one of those officers and gave a slightly fuller description, which she broadcast to the force. The homeowner followed, hoping to get his keys back.

Police spot the suspect and close in

In the dim light of the drumming rainstorm, another Wauwatosa officer caught sight of the suspect hiding in some bushes at 58th Street and Washington Boulevard, two blocks east of the entrance to the Highlands. He saw her, too, and ran again, through yards diagonally toward 59th and Galena.

As officers converged on an alley that runs halfway up the middle of that block from the south, Wauwatosa’s K9 officer was next to see the suspect. He shouted, “He’s over here!” and released his dog, Addy.

Moments later, they all heard two gunshots – then, a few seconds later, two more. They came from a residence completely surrounded by a solid 6-foot-tall fence. The suspect had managed to hoist himself over it.

The K9 officer found a back gate in the fence, tried the handle and, finding it locked, kicked it in. In the yard, inside a gazebo in the drumming rain, stood a man who told him, “They’re over there,” pointing to the south.

The officer raced outside again and found himself seconds later among four other Wauwatosa officers, everybody with guns drawn, facing two men, one young and wearing a red baseball cap, the other middle-age and also holding a gun.

“That guy was shooting at me!” the young man wailed as he went facedown to the ground on orders. The older man dropped his gun and went to his knees with his hands up, but would not lie prone. Both were handcuffed.

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Under the rules of jurisdiction, Wauwatosa police turned the 45-year-old 59th Street homeowner over to Milwaukee police, who arrested him and took over the scene for evidence of the shots fired, while Tosa police took in the 18-year-old on suspicion of burglary and attempted auto theft.

(Still a mystery to the Tosa police: How did both the burglary suspect and his citizen pursuer get out of the man’s fenced back yard without being seen, and apparently without either using the locked, then-intact gate? Perhaps they both climbed over, one after the other…?)

Keys, keys and more keys

At any rate, in the teenage suspect’s pocket were the keys to the Toyota and $120 cash, in the exact denominations the woman on 60th Street reported missing from her purse. Also in his pocket was a BMW key stolen from a home in the 1500 block of Martha Washington Drive on July 14. The youth admitted that he’d been riding a bike that day that was found abandoned behind that home.

He denied knowing a boy who had been arrested July 8 at the wheel of a Honda Pilot stolen from yet another Highlands home, even though that boy had told police a nickname that the suspect was called by family and friends.

In that case, the juvenile said he hadn’t stolen the Honda but had been lent it by his friend who had no job but a lot of cars. Police are still investigating that connection.

And lastly, Milwaukee police on Friday spotted a Toyota Highlander stolen July 14 from yet another home on Martha Washington Drive, and though the driver and one passenger escaped, they abandoned the SUV and another passenger was caught and arrested.

In the stolen Highlander they found a Hyundai key fob, and that had also been stolen from a Washington Highlands home on July 14.

The homeowner there reported last Wednesday, July 17, that someone, probably the thief who’d stolen the key three days before, had come back and tried to steal the car, apparently not knowing it would only unlock the car, not start it. She had heard him and confronted him, chasing him off the property and reporting a description of a young man, about 18.

And finally, another new report, just in, says that on Saturday afternoon – the day before everything finally came to a head – yes, another homeowner on Martha Washington Drive reported an attempted a burglary at her home, breaking a basement storm window.

Wrapping it up, Capt. Jeffrey Sutter of the Wauwatosa Police Department said, “We’re sure he did a couple of those, and we’re pretty sure a couple more, and then possibly several.”

The suspect remains in custody while the investigation continues, but charges are expected soon.

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