Two Charged in Burglary of Tosa Business

Two Milwaukee residents are facing charges after they allegedly broke into a Wauwatosa office in May and stole cash and a handgun from a safe.

Lamonte Ashley, 48, and Jesse Leon Grafton Jr., 55, were each charged in Milwaukee County Circuit Court on Tuesday with one count of burglary. If convicted, they both face up to 12½ years in prison and $25,000 in fines.

According to initial police reports, on May 21, burglars pried open several doors to get into the building management office of the Fairview Building, 10425 W. North Ave., where the safe stood. They were thought at the time to have actually carted the safe out of the building, leaving little if any evidence behind. But that wasn't quite the case.

The following day, the building manager said in an interview Thursday, he had found the safe still on the premises, in a corner of a vacant back room in the office suite. The squat, 400-pound safe had been dragged there and "bashed senseless," he said, the door battered off with a sledgehammer or other very heavy tool or object.

On top of the safe, he said, neatly draped, was a shirt – his own spare shirt that he kept in his office. And on that shirt was blood.

Apparently, in the process of breaking in, one of the burglars had cut himself. Nothing else in the executive office had been touched besides the safe, except that the shirt had been taken from the opposite corner, possibly to keep fingerprints off the safe.

According to the criminal complaint, DNA tests showed that the blood on the shirt and elsewhere was a match to Grafton’s. Ashley’s DNA was recovered from a key to the safe that was lying on the floor.

Both men were under supervision by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections for previous burglary convictions.

Ashley is currently being held in Milwaukee County Jail on $4,000 cash bond. He had been convicted of burglary in Waukesha County in 2005 and also has a record of several convictions for property theft, the latest in February.

Grafton had been sentenced to 7½ years in prison in 2006, but was released to extended supervision in September 2010.

The night after the Fairview Building burglary, , 4057 N. Mayfair Rd., and a safe was battered open by force, and on July 4 at Christ King Church, 2646 Swan Blvd.; however, police have not said that the crimes were believed to be related.