Teens charged in thefts that spanned six weeks
BY JESSICA SMITH
Staff Writer

MONROE — Three juvenile males have been charged in connection with a recent string of burglaries and thefts.

Two Jamesburg boys, ages 16 and 17, and one Monroe boy, 16, were arrested Dec. 19 after police connected them to three separate thefts, two of which took place at Monroe Township High School.

“It was a cooperative effort between the police department and school officials,” said Monroe Police Detective Sgt. Lawrence Linke.

The first instance was on the evening of Nov. 8, when the boys allegedly broke into the high school and stole a 27-inch television valued at $535. Police would eventually recover the TV set at one of the suspects’ homes.

Exactly one month after the first instance, the boys allegedly stole two Hewlett Packard computers from a faculty work room at the high school. The computers were valued at over $2,000.

On Dec. 13, police said, the boys burglarized the school again, attempting to steal a number of chemical substances from a science laboratory. The chemicals were moved from the lab to another area in the school, but were not removed from the building. It remains unclear why the boys did not take the chemicals out of the building, and what they had planned to do with them, Linke said.

The boys are also accused of entering a 2006 Saturn on Dec. 3, and taking a wallet that contained $50 in cash, and various credit cards. The car was parked on Butternut Lane at the time of the theft. Later, the juveniles took the credit cards to East Brunswick to use at the Brunswick Square Mall, police said.

After a failed attempt to make a purchase at the Barnes & Noble store there, an employee of the store alerted police to the suspicious credit card activity. Unaware, the boys moved inside the mall, where they made a purchase with one of the stolen cards at Journeys footwear store.

They were then apprehended by the East Brunswick police in EB Games. The boys were taken into the police station, then released to their parents, according to Lt. Robert Strempeck of the East Brunswick Police Department.

At the time, the car burglary had not yet been reported, but East Brunswick police were soon able to tie the two crimes together.

“Somebody was sharp over there,” Linke said of East Brunswick police.

From there, the suspects were linked to the incidents at the high school.

According to Linke, there is no way to speculate on how the juvenile offenders will be sentenced, as there are many variables involved.

“It has a lot to do with whether they have prior records,” he said.