A resident received a remote alert from his home security system, and used his cell phone to watch in real-time as a burglar moved through his house. After a prompt call to police, officers located the suspect nearby and arrested him.
On Friday, September 7, 2018, at about 10:11 a.m., our 24-hour dispatch center received a call reporting a burglary in progress at a home in the 1900 block of Edgewood Drive. The victim, a man in his fifties, reported that he was remotely live-monitoring his security system and could see a burglar inside his home. The victim said he had watched the suspect kick open a bedroom door, and also had seen him go in and out of the home a couple of times removing property from inside.
Officers and plainclothes detectives responded immediately, but the suspect had already left the scene. Officers discovered the house had been rummaged through, and that the suspect had entered the home by forcing open a door in the backyard.
At 10:27 a.m., detectives located a matching the suspect’s description on foot in the 1800 block of Woodland Avenue in East Palo Alto and detained him without incident. Detectives located the suspect’s vehicle, a red 2015 Honda Civic two-door, parked nearby. Inside the car, they located electronic devices stolen from the victim’s home. Police arrested the suspect and returned the stolen property to the victim.
Also inside the suspect’s vehicle, detectives located property that had been reported stolen in a residential burglary from the 900 block of Oregon Avenue that had occurred on Friday, August 31, 2018. In that case, an unknown suspect had removed a window screen of an unoccupied home and made entry inside at some point between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., and stole several legally-owned handguns and rifles. Detectives located gun cases stolen from that burglary inside the suspect’s vehicle, but the guns themselves were not there.
As a result of finding the gun cases, detectives obtained a search warrant allowing police to search the suspect’s residence for the weapons stolen in the Oregon Avenue burglary. At about 4:30 p.m. on Friday, September 7, the Palo Alto Police Department’s SWAT team served the warrant at the suspect’s home in the 1800 block of Woodland Avenue in East Palo Alto. The weapons were not there, but detectives are continuing to investigate other leads in an attempt to solve the Oregon Avenue burglary and recover the stolen property.
Police booked 20-year-old Miguel Valdovinos Esparza of East Palo Alto into the Santa Clara County Main Jail for felony possession of stolen property (for both the Edgewood Drive and Oregon Avenue burglaries). His booking photo is attached to this release.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call our 24-hour dispatch center at 650-329-2413. Anonymous tips can be e-mailed to [email protected] or sent via text message or voice mail to 650-383-8984. Tips can also be submitted anonymously through our free mobile app, downloadable at www.bit.ly/PAPD-AppStore or www.bit.ly/PAPD-GooglePlay.
